BY INUSA NDAHI, DAMATURU
Governor Mai Mala Buni of Yobe State has tasked mainstream media to continue to push the boundaries in the dissemination of credible information to the public.
The governor spoke yesterday when he hosted the leadership and members of the State Correspondents’ Chapel in his office in Damaturu.
“Without the media, we cannot achieve or thrive in a democracy. We want the people to know what the government is doing on their behalf and it’s only through the media that they will get to know.
“The mainstream media will have to do more in an age where social media, which is unregulated, is posing both a challenge and a threat to credible information”, he said.
Governor Buni noted that social media has become more of a menace in the sense of people, who have no training or knowledge of the rudiments of public writing, seizing the opportunity to write any and everything they like without being hinged by the requirements of law and journalism ethics.
In this way, he added, some of the social media writers engage in libel and culumny by ‘character assassination’.
“I am not against some youths learning to write. It’s a good thing that they can learn to write. I am just against using the platforms that are now available at the price of an internet data to do things that are unethical”, he said.
Governor Buni noted that since journalism is described as the “ultimate profession”, something has to be done urgently to regulate and provide rules of the road for social media.
“Even in the US and other advanced countries, there are rules that are followed. So why can’t we regulate here in our country”, he asked.
The governor reminded writers to be conscious of the power of writing and its impact in public spaces, saying negative information played a key role in triggering the first World War. “if it triggered the first world war, then we have to guard against allowing false and fake information from causing another catastrophe”, he said.
Chairman of the Correspondents’ Chapel Mohammed Abubakar pledged the support of the chapel in enlightening the public about the effort of the government to improve people’s living conditions.
The governor has provided a new 16-seat capacity bus to the chapel as a logistic facilitation for its activities.