Tinubu, Obaigbena: Media owners and their warrior journalists

The public spat between two prominent media owners – Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Television Continental (TVC) and The Nation newspaper and Nduka Obaigbena, proprietor of ARISE NEWS TV and THISDAY newspaper – with their media warriors engaged in mud fight on behalf of their principals, has unnervingly exposed the ugly underbelly of media practice in Nigeria.

The surrogate media warriors, carrying the can on behalf of their principals, are the old guards of Dele Alake/Bayo Onanuga for Tinubu, in a tackle with the younger generation of Reuben Abati/Rufai Oseni. I will address the confrontation at two levels – as an academic interrogation and as public affairs commentary.

At the academic level, there is need to interrogate some operative words: free press, independent media, press freedom, blackmail, bullying and unethical practices freely bandied by the two parties. For a starter, perhaps, we could look at the titles of some of the statements issued by the two parties to have an appreciation of the depth of venom, animosity and the incense, which characterized the personalised confrontation.

These are some of the headlines in newspapers and online media platforms: Dec. 12, 2022 – You can’t silence free press, Arise Editors tell Tinubu’s media campaign DG, Onanuga; Dec. 13, 2022 – Nduka Obaigbena and his THISDAY/ARISE NEWS’ hypocritical grandstanding on public morality; Dec. 14, 2022 – Lies have short legs. They do not run far, Fake News from Bayo Onanuga and Dele Alake; Dec. 15, 2022 – How Obaigbena is undermining integrity of journalism – APC Campaign.

In his December 14, 2022 statement signed by his Chief of Staff, Fauziya Mohammed, Obaigbena had dared Onanuga and Alake to present Tinubu for Townhall debate of more than eight minutes ‘’where questions are not pre-set, pre-arranged and rehearsed’’, stressing ‘’the resort to media bullying tactics, blackmail and fake news will not work.’’

In its December 15, 2022 response, the APC Presidential Campaign Council’s duo of Dele Alake and Bayo Onanuga reiterated the party’s stand not to make Tinubu, its presidential candidate, available to a scheme that ‘’is nothing but a racket by the ARISE TV owner designed to embarrass our candidate.’’ It pointed out what it described as Obaigbena’s ‘’ well-known perverse and ignoble approach to media practice… that continues to undermine the integrity of the journalism profession in the country.’’ Then, the APC –PCC brought the hammer down on the THISDAY/ARISE TV owner, pointing out that: ‘’Mr. Nduka Obaigbena (is) a congenital blackmailer and hustler’’ who ordinarily is beneath their level as ‘’well-bred media professionals to continue to engage in a public spat.’’

Perhaps the trigger for current virulent confrontation can be traced to the joint statement by THISDAY/ARISE NEWS Boards of Editors reported on December 12, 2022 on what they claimed was APC’s efforts to silence free and independent press where they accused Alake and Onanuga of taking ‘’unprofessionalism, recklessness, picayune politics and blackmail to a new art form’’, snickering that the two men even threaten the free press with The Nigerian Press Council (NPC). THISDAY/ARISE NEWS Boards dismissed The Nigerian Press Council as an agency ‘’that has been completely rejected by the mainstream independent Nigerian media precisely for the reason of misuse and abuse by an incipient dictatorship.’’ This is reckless arrogance by the two boards and arrant mischief that has attended journalists’, particularly print journalists’ opposition to the NPC, when the three umbrella media organizations – the Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) and the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) – cannot exercise professional discipline on print media practitioners.

So, the print media terrain is strewn with unethical practices, including news fabrication and non-payment of salaries to journalists, for months. Perhaps, the Nigerian Press Council can seize the moral high ground on this issue by investigating the serious charges and counter charges of professional misconduct by the media combatants and make its findings public to exert moral pressure. Given its mandate, the NPC is not completely a toothless bulldog, though journalists would want to make it irrelevant.

The notion of free and independent press bandied by both parties exists in their warped imagination. It is a convenient labeling adopted by the media that is not in accord with reality. Can The Nation newspaper and the TVC owned by Tinubu be regarded as free and independent? Similarly, can
THISDAY newspaper and ARISE NEWS TV lay claim to being a free and independent press? It is intriguing how in their blind anger and personal animosity, it did not occur to Dele Alake, Bayo Onanuga, as Tinubu surrogates and Reuben Abati/Rufai Oseni in Obaigbena’s corner that their very public spat has exposed them as lackeys in the slave camps of media owners. Their talk or posture on professionalism and free press, therefore, amount to brazen propaganda. But give it to Tinubu, he had refrained from getting into the gutter with his warriors, as opposed to Obaigbena, maintaining a presidential aloofness, even when he is the issue!!! His team strategy or surrogate replica?

THISDAY/ARISE Team shot itself in the foot by alluding to its alleged fake news by Alake and Onanuga as copycat of former American President, Donald Trump’s penchant of tarring mainstream American media as purveyors of fake news. This exposes the media outlets’ shallowness, illiteracy and lack of diligence, as it implies that the charge of fake news peddled by some big American media establishments, as exposed by Trump, was false. Nothing can be further from the truth.

I will illustrate the validity of Trump’s fake news charge against the American media with one classic example. The CNN, the global leader in international broadcasting had on June 22, 2017, barely five months into the Trump Presidency, published an article on its website, indicating federal investigators’ probe of a meeting between then White House adviser, Anthony Scaramucci and Director of a Russian investment fund, Kirill Dmitriev, which the anonymous source quoted by CNN disowned, and had to be retracted by the CNN. Four days later, on June 26, 2017, three top CNN journalists, including Eric Litchblau, a Pulitzer Prize winner, journalism’s highest recognition award, were forced to resign their roles in the article. Today, the menace of Fake News has become a global issue of interest, thanks to Donald Trump.
To be continued tomorrow
Dr. Olawunmi, Senior Lecturer, Department of Mass Communication, Adeleke University, Ede, Osun State, is former Washington Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria. Phone (SMS only) 08033647571 Email: olawunmibisi@yahoo.com