Issue-attention cycle in Nigeria can be very brief. The uproar over the event is abating and life will soon return to normal until something else happens. This is not the first time NBC would bang the sledge on a station. Independent Television and Independent Radio in Benin were sealed up on August 21, 2003 for playing martial music and causing a stir; AIT and Raypower FM were sealed up on October 23, 2005 for showing bodies of victims of an air crash in contravention, NBC claimed, of certain sections of the NBC code. Others, including DBN TV Lagos; Minaj-TV Obosi, Lagos and Port Harcourt; Minaj Radio, Obosi; Universal Broadcasting Service, Lagos; MG Communications, Kaduna, Freedom Radio, Kaduna and Radio Jeremi, Warri were suspended for various transgressions, including reluctance to renew their licences. Each action brought a climactic reaction, and then the denouement. What really is the problem?

In answering this question, I try to answer another question: if the Channels TV event were to have been in a country whose political weather is truly clement to the rule of law and due process, say the US, what would have happened? What would the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the US equivalent of NBC do? Perhaps the best way to answer this question is to examine what the FCC did in a typical case of contravention. In March 2003, the FCC received several petitions that ABC and its affiliates showed nudity in contravention of FCC regulations about 9pm on February 25, 2003. The stations, in one of the episodes of a syndicated program had shown a woman in a bathroom. The camera carefully avoided her front view but exposed the rear. The FCC invited the station to respond. A dialogue ensued. ABC claimed that what the regulations forbade was the display of sexual organs and that what it showed was a woman’s buttocks which were not a sexual organ. The FCC rejected that on the ground that the images were titillating, shocking and dwelled upon. There were further arguments and counter-arguments. The FCC fined each of the fifty-one stations that aired the program $27,500. FCC vigorously enforces the law where it finds violation. In 2004 alone, it took action in 12 cases involving hundreds of thousands of complaints, assigning penalties and voluntary payments totaling approximately $8 million.

Why is the approach of the NBC so radically different from that of the FCC? Why is the NBC still so confrontational nine years after Nigeria became a democracy? Some might think the US case differs in that the Nigerian case involved a security issue. I disagree. Chief Shonekan ‘resigned’ and the nation did not even feel it. In my view, the problem is structural and cultural. Fundamentally, though the NBC claims it is out to protect “your right to quality broadcasting”, it is really an agency of the executive arm of government. The FCC gets its powers from and reports to the US Congress, whereas the NBC is responsible to the president. The NBC reports to one man; the FCC reports to hundreds. The unmistakable proclivity, especially in our culture, is to want to please the person to whom one reports. In the Channels TV case, it is almost certain that the president did not order the NBC to shut down Channels; the Commission probably acted out of overzealous willingness to please its real boss. I have no difficulty imagining that were the NBC under the supervision of the House of Representatives or Senate or both, the case would have been different. I have no difficulty in concluding that unless the Commission is moved from the presidency, cases like this will continue to occur. I have no difficulty in concluding that were the FCC in NBC’s shoes, it would dialogue with Channels and NAN, rather than ask the nearest battalion to invade their premises and incarcerate their staff.

Not many people know that in Nigeria, only one person determines who owns a broadcast station and when, and that person is the president. If you apply for a broadcast license, it moves from the NBC to the Ministry of Information and finally to the president’s table. If he says ‘No’, or if he is simply too busy to append his signature, or he is away on hajj, that is it. Yet all over the world, the maxim is “the airwaves belong to the people”. Is this maxim true in the case of Nigeria? If the airwaves belong to the people, then they should be managed by the people’s representatives. Of course we know that most of the current representatives were imposed on the people, but so was the president.

Yes, I agree that the actions of the NBC were a throwback to the ignoble days of Babangida and Abacha but they were a manifestation of the several structural carry-overs from our recent past. It is not enough to condemn the actions of the NBC. We need to correct the structural lopsidedness in our polity that makes the president more powerful than the country he runs and a governor the all-in-all of his state. What really are we making of democracy in Nigeria? We think because we hold periodic elections, we are a democracy. People agitate and struggle during elections and after that go home and wait for another four years. No one is holding anyone accountable for his actions. There are no on-going dialogues. Yet theorists of democracy, whether radical or democratic pluralists, hold that dialogue is the fuel on which democracy runs. By dialogue is meant what I call “same-rung deliberation” in that participants are sitting on the same rungs of a ladder, and not the fear-run dialogue between a cat and mice.

It is instructive that of all the commentators on the Channels event, no one has spoken in support of the actions of Channels or NAN. (Well NAN denied knowledge of the offensive news item.) What people have condemned is the approach adopted by the NBC and the SSS. No one would be happy with airwaves run by libertine licentiousness. And no one would suggest that we adopt the US code. But there must be dialogue in a democracy and there must be a procedure. If the law indeed says that telling people that the president has resigned is punishable by imprisonment, no Nigerian would cry if offenders were imprisoned once the proper procedure is followed which procedure must include giving the accused proper chance to defend himself — again — dialogue.

Our lawmakers must take a pause and examine the institutions and structure which we carried over from the dark days of the military and which were exploited by the immediate last civilian administration to rule the land with military ruthlessness. Such institutions and structures must be dismantled. NBC would be the happier for it if it is rescued from the choking tentacles of the presidency.

Finally, not in its own interest but in the interest of democracy, Channels TV must head for court and seek redress. The incarcerated staff must do same. This is how we can nurture our democracy.

Ayobami Ojebode writes from College of Communications, Pennsylvania State University, USA

ABSTRACT:

In the clamour for a New World Information and Communication Order, extensive scholarly attention has been given to international disparities and their effects. But national and domestic issues have only been mentioned, when at all, in passing. This paper attempted to investigate the possibility of there being a domestic dimension to the world imbalance. The daily news bulletins of four broadcast stations were monitored for three months and analysed. The result shows that a very minute proportion of news (7.1%) deals with rural areas and rural issues. even this little fraction is one-way information to and not from the rural people. About one-third of the rural news is spotty. All these point to the need to tackle quest for a new order at the home front as well.

ABSTRACT:

Scholars of interpersonal communication emphasize the central place of empathy in interpersonal relationships. They equally underscore the indispensability of non-verbal cues in empathizing. Analysts of relationships in virtual communities, however, observe that deep interpersonal relationships are forming in cyberspace, though the cyberspace severely limits the use of non-verbal cues. This study set out to investigate if effective empathizing indeed takes place in cyberspace, and the techniques used in cyberspace empathizing. To do this, an Internet group was studied over a period of twelve months using a combination of survey and content analysis methods. The study found out that effective empathizing was indeed taking place in cyberspace. This was made possible by a high degree of self-disclosure, a strict observance of netiquette and the use of some of those techniques of empathy used in offline relationships. The study underscores the need to redefine some of the theoretical assumptions that have led to ruling out the possibility of interpersonal relationships in cyberspace.

The globalisation of the media of mass communication has been praised for being one of the major catalysts for the spread of democracy and development especially in the developing world. But discussions of the impact of media globalisation have by no means been homogenous. There are strong arguments that rather than being beneficiaries, democracy and development have been victims of the globalized media world. As a result, nations and institutions are responding to media globalisation with caution. This paper examines the possible impact of global media on Nigerian democracy and development. It attempts to categorise the responses of the Nigerian broadcast media to media globalisation as reflected in how they handle products of global media. Four such categories were discovered: acceptance, replication, metacasting and blackout. The paper discusses the implications of these for our democracy and development.

Scholars and policymakers are increasingly recognising the central place of reading in the total education of the individual. One of the results of this is the involvement of many segments of the society in the promotion of a reading culture. These include the mass media. This study singled out a popular mass medium, radio, focusing on its reading programmes with a view to determining if these programmes indeed caused people to read. An in-depth interview technique was adopted and data were analysed through a combination of descriptive and qualitative methods. Majority (88%) of our respondents believed that radio reading programmes could indeed promote a culture of reading. About 66% stated that listening to the programmes created in them a strong urge to read but only about 24% had ever actually read as a result of listening to radio reading programmes, though all the respondents were literate. This pattern cuts across different levels of education. The study uncovered a number of reasons for the “urge-action” gap and suggested ways to more effectively employ radio in promoting a culture of reading

ABSTRACT:

Radio stations have used jingles for environmental education and communication in Nigeria for decades though not much has been done to study the impact of such use–which is what this paper attempted to do. Through twelve focus group discussions in six local government areas of Oyo state, Nigeria, interviews with the programme directors of two radio stations and questionnaire administered on eighteen programme producers from those stations, the researcher found that producers and directors had full confidence in the ability of the jingles to engender environmental sanctity, and that listeners fully understood the message of the jingles. However, listeners mostly did not obey the behaviour recommended by the jingles because the government did not make the infrastructures needed to do so available or functional. Though the jingles were tested and full confidence was reposed in them, the outcome of their use is a frustration of the listeners and even the producers. Based on the findings, the paper drew five lessons for better social marketing of environmental behaviour.

ABSTRACT:

The study set out to examine the extent of the coverage given by the mass media to women in agriculture and agribusiness in view of statistics indicating that women constitute an overwhelming proportion of the people in that sector. Based in Nigeria, the study analysed the content of 282 stories on the agricultural pages of two selected national newspapers, 187 pictures illustrating some of the stories and 48 agricultural broadcasts from two radio stations. The study revealed that though in reality women formed about 80% of the labour force in agriculture, less than 20% of the people featured in mass media content on agriculture were women. In all sections of the agriculture sector, even in trading, women are portrayed as being in the minority. The study concluded that the mass media, in exact opposition to what obtained in reality, conferred on the men the status of the major operators in the agricultural sector and on women the status of the insignificant minority. In other words, the status of active role players rightfully deserved by women was given men and vice-versa, hence the term status mis-conferral. Advancing likely reasons for this, the paper proposes policy adjustments that could be made to correct the situation.