By Josef Omorotionwan
The importance of the press cannot be overemphasized. There is hardly any aspect of human endeavour that is today not covered by the activities of the press – from the maternity ward to the mortuary; from agriculture to zoning; and, indeed, in every sphere of life, we see traces of the press.

From time, the strategic role of the press has been realised as succinctly expressed by the third President of the United States of America, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826): “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without a press or  a press without government, I would not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”.

Ever since the Supreme Law of the land, the Constitution, assigned to the press, the role of the watch-dog; the role of upholding the fundamental objectives of the Constitution; and the role of the responsibility and accountability of the government to the governed, it has become clear that the media has been assigned an onerous responsibility.

The watch-dog never sleeps. At the legislative end, the watch-dog is there for the people, constantly ensuring that the lawmakers play by the rules. Once the laws are enacted, it becomes the responsibility of the media to carry them to the people.

That explains why, in the case of our elections, from the stage of registration to the election proper; from the election to the post-election phases at the Tribunal and Appeal Court processes, the press is constantly there for the people – educating them on their rights and obligations under the law. In essence, the media must stay awake in order that the rest of society can sleep.

When the law runs foul and in those critical moments of the miscarriage of justice, the media is constantly there to point out what is and what should be.

However, despite the fundamental importance of free speech and free press in a democracy, some people still believe that speech should be free only for those who agree with them. Once we leave the level of abstraction to the level of specific questions or conflicts, there is discouragingly low level of support for free speech and free press.

Government is constantly at war with itself. While wanting a free press, government does everything contrary to the tenets of a free press. This approach-avoidance stance can be likened to the case of a man who always wants good teeth but does not want to see a dentist.

At the staffing level, government recruits the best; government trains the best; but government cannot retain the best. Soon after recruiting and training the best, most of them “decamp” to the private media outfits where they get higher wages and more alluring incentives.

In the end, perhaps unwittingly, this produces a win-win situation for everybody: the private media outfits save a lot of money in initial training costs; the decampees, so called, besides getting the enhanced pay packet, they immediately become bosses in their new places as against the subordinate positions they occupied in their previous places; and the original employers, have a repository of goodwill out there.

They acquire for themselves the status of trainers of trainers. For instance, there is hardly any media house you visit throughout the country today without meeting a former staff of the Nigerian Observer and Edo Broadcasting Service, EBS.

Government would want the best coverage from its media outfits; in the case of Edo State, the Nigerian Observer and the EBS. Meanwhile, these outfits still depend largely on the analogue equipment that were acquired for them at inception, during the medieval age, so to say; while the media world out there has gone fully digital.

There is no royal road to geometry. And you can’t eat your cake and have it. Let government invest in the update of its media outfits for the mutual benefit of all – efficiency would be enhanced and the much coveted Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, would shoot up considerably.

The government-owned media are tranquilisers of sorts. Rather than “publish and be damned”, which is the hallmark of bold journalists, the practitioners in government must remain palliative, only obeying the master’s voice. They are only heavy in propaganda, lending credence to what a British Prime Minister once said: “In times of war, the Ministry of Information becomes the Ministry of propaganda”!

A government media-man would drive on a failed road, a road completely ridden with pot-holes but he cannot say so. Rather, he must be ready at all times to unleash his venom on the opposition politician who dares to say so.

His boss could be stealing the country blind but rather then say so, he must defend the action of the boss and thus, as an “apprentice in thievery and corruption”, he perpetuates the culture and tradition of these vices until he ultimately graduates into a bigger thief than his boss.

Three years ago, at the celebration of our 51st Independence Anniversary, it took a foreign guest lecturer to inform Nigerians that their politicians were the highest paid in the entire world but Nigeria’s infrastructure was among  the least developed. On that occasion, two people spoke – President Goodluck Jonathan and the guest lecturer.

The President’s speech, which was only as insightful as telling us that one could get wet in the rain was freely circulated; while the guest lecturer’s speech, which contained the home truth, the bitter truth on which development could be based, was strategically withheld from circulation.

In all, information remains the raw material on which a free press thrives and by which a free people live. To perform their constitutionally assigned responsibilities, journalists must have reasonable degree of independence, freedom and assertiveness.

They must also have reasonable access to information and be able to function in an atmosphere devoid of harassment and intimidation. Except in the rare cases of inevitable classification of documents, government officials should strive at the goal of full disclosure.

In every form of media ownership, deliberate efforts should be made to balance the interests of the owners and the public.