Chairman of the Association of Online and Social Media Practitioners of
Nigeria, (AMPON), Mr. Wole Arisekola on Saturday advices
journalists to be sure of final election result by INEC before reporting news
on the forthcoming elections.
While speaking with international reporters who are in Nigeria to monitor
the forthcoming presidential election, Wole Arisekola in Lagos said, “Events
around the 2015 election are probably some of the most interesting, heated and
pulse-raising in the history of Nigeria. There have been plenty of issues to
argue about and anxiety everywhere.
The elections will come and go but what
should be the roles of the media in all of these? Our role should be the how
best to announce genuine results in a balanced and fair way in order to allow
for peace to reign after it all. Let us the mindful of the important tasks before
us. We are the windows to the world and whatever we say always have a lasting
effect. There will always be issues, but how we report those issues will go a
long way in giving us the Nigeria of our dreams. Let us be unbiased in our
views and how we put those news items out to the world. The most important part
is that conclusions on news reportage should be based on facts, not the outlook
of the reporter. Journalism is about giving citizens information about public
affairs that is as accurate as possible.”
Wole Arisekola reminds journalists of the trust people have in them and how
unconfirmed reports could further heat up the polity, “We are the overseers of
Nigeria’s public broadcasting operations, we should therefore devote more time
and attention to complete news and results during and after the election.
People trust us with what they hear, we should not betray that trust by setting
people against themselves with what we put out to the public”, he appealed.
While thanking Google Nigeria’s efforts at sensitizing journalists on the
best way to go about reporting the forthcoming elections, he reiterated some of
their appeals at a workshop they had recently.
“Google Nigeria tasked the media on the use of modern
data tools for effective reportage, especially of the forthcoming general
elections in the country. Mr. Taiwo Kola-Ogunlade, Google’s Communications and
Public Affairs Manager, has made an appeal at the Google Data Tools for
Elections Reporting Workshop held in Lagos that there are various useful tools
such as Google Advance Search, Google Trends, social media streams etc could be
used in sourcing data. He reminded us about the tools which would help the
media to get the picture of what was happening at a particular time at
different places and getting it to the public
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