A Peep Into The World Of Nigerian Journalists As The World Celebrates Press Freedom -By Isaac Asabor

If there is anything that has not changed in Journalism, from the perception of this writer, since the UN General Assembly took a decision 30 years ago, and proclaimed an international day for press freedom, which is celebrated every 3rd of May, it is unarguably the plight of journalists.

Against the foregoing backdrop, it is not out of place to say that this year’s theme for the Day, “Shaping a Future of Rights: Freedom of Expression as a Driver for all other human rights” which signifies the enabling element of freedom of expression to enjoy and protect all other human rights serves as an impetus to recall the plight of Reporters in the newspaper industry.

For the sake of clarity, it is expedient to say that Journalists are indispensable to the news cycle. They help people understand and come to terms with recent happenings as current events shape the way individuals see the world, making news a vital vehicle for offering context. Journalists do not just cover current events, as news in a vacuum is not useful to anyone. Instead, they present it in the frame of reality so readers can ascertain an event’s importance and impact on the world.

Unfortunately, the media industry has been going through a steady degeneration for some time, compelled by declining readership, viewership, and advertising revenues, which have shifted to other forms of media, especially digital. As these slumps have been occurring for several years, companies have been forced to reduce their marketing expenditures, further accelerating the drop in advertising revenues.

In fact, the decline in revenues across media houses has also led to the retrogressive situation where Journalists are not paid salaries at the end of the month so much that the leadership of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) had for the umpteenth time berated media owners for their continued non-payment of journalists’ salaries in the country as the Union believes that the negative trend continues to impact negatively on the practice of journalism. In fact, the Union believes that a situation where some journalists are made to work for months without any salary is an aberration and should be condemned.

Whether you like it or not, Journalists typically have been playing leading roles in their communities in holding governments and businesses accountable. Unfortunately, in this digital age, Journalists have become endangered species. Without any iota of exaggeration, the business of selling words to readers and selling readers and viewers to advertisers is falling apart, and while this actuality was ignored for many years, not a few media houses and platforms are at last adopting digital technologies to address the challenges and opportunities presented by internet disruption as not few of the media companies in Nigeria are digital-centric.

Given the fact that the collective career prospect of Journalists has been undergoing disruptive changes in the last decade, which affects them as well as their readers and viewers, it is expedient to opine in this piece that it is incumbent for the leadership of the NUJ to urge employers in the sector to be paying their staff on monthly basis, and at the same time urge them to prioritize the welfare of their staff.

Besides urging media owners to be paying their staff as at when due, and even offset their outstanding salaries, as the case may be, to journalists working for them, it is also expedient to urge Journalists to, on their own, update their knowledge by undergoing training in digital journalism. The reason for the foregoing cannot be farfetched as online journalism has greatly altered the ways in which Journalism is practiced.

In fact, analyzed from the thematic perspective of the 2023 celebration of World Press Freedom Day, stakeholders in the media sector of the economy should see the eventful day as significant because it is a reminder of the crucial role of the media in a democratic society, and in the same vein highlights the need to prioritize the collective welfare of journalists generally and their sources from censorship, intimidation, and violence. It also serves as a call to action for governments and organizations to respect and uphold the right to freedom of expression, as enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.