Senate
President, Senator David Mark, was last week quoted by a newspaper
asking for a clampdown on social media, saying that people now use them
to demean their leaders. Now the Senate President is saying he was
misquoted
Below is a statement from his special adviser on media, Kola
Ologbondiyan, plus the the full text of what the senate president
really said at the gathering
Recently, the President of the Senate, Senator
David Mark, delivered a keynote address at the Senate press corps
Retreat in Umuahia, Abia Sate. The theme of the Retreat was: The Role
of the Media in Promoting Good Governance. In his address, the President
of the Senate had asserted that “the emergence of the social media
like Facebook, twitter, blackberry messenger, YouTube etc have changed
the face of the media practice by making information sharing easier,
faster and quicker. But this is not without its demerits. Social media
has become a threat to the ethics of media practice and good governance
because of its accessibility and absolute freedom. Every freedom
carries a responsibility. Even in the advanced democracies, where we
all agree that good governance is practiced, there is no absolute
freedom.
Continuing, Senator Mark expressed the belief that “there must be a
measure to check the negative tendencies of the social media in our
country. I say this because media practice, particularly journalism,
process news gathering and dissemination. It also operates a feedback
mechanism and where the practitioners erred there is room for rebuttal.
But in the social media a faceless character can post any information
that is absolutely false and misleading but will never retract it. At
the end of the day one is bombarded with questions over what one has no
business with. I suggest that schools of mass communication and
journalism should review their curricular to include the operations of
social media.”
Senator Mark also informed the audience that since he was quoted out of
context that mobile phones was not for the poor myth, he had learnt to
read a prepared text wherever he went to deliver an address. “I have
challenged anybody to show me a quote in my own words where I said
telephone is not for the poor. Nobody has been able to produce it yet I
have to defend this everyday that what I said was if you must use a
phone then you have to pay for the service.”
Noting that he always love to speak from the heart, the President of the
Senate said he hoped and prayed that whatever he would present in his
address to the Senate Press Corps at the event would not be misconstrued
and misrepresented to Nigerians who were not present at the event.
It was as if Senator Mark saw tomorrow or had a premonition of how his
innocuous remark on the social media would be misinterpreted and
misrepresented by mischief makers who have been lurking around to attack
him.
Hardly had he returned to his seat after the address when mischief
makers began to work on their blogs in the social media. The message of
the President of the Senate, delivered in a simple language, has not
only been misconstrued, it has become misrepresented and had begun to
spread like a wildfire. Mark had become the victim of the fear he had
expressed before his address.
The wildest among the reactions said Senator Mark had called for
censorship of the social media. There were those who said the President
of the Senate stated that social media was being used to insult the
leaders of the nation like him while others became as mundane as
alleging that he wanted the social media to stop criticizing those in
authority and to write only their good sides. All these are absolute
falsehood.
From the excerpts of the speech quoted above, it is manifest that the
President of the Senate neither called for the censorship of the social
media nor alleged that the medium was being used to insult the Nigerian
leaders like him. He also did not ask the social media to stop
criticizing the Federal Government and write only on its good sides.
Rather, he called for measures that would check the negative tendencies
inherent in the use of the social media. That, I believe, is a genuine
call that would help refocus the medium.
One would therefore have expected on-line publishers to join the clarion
call made by Senator Mark that the assault to news gathering and
dissemination being perpetrated on the social media be checked. There
are several instances when social media activists have posted falsehood
and readers believed them only to discover later that the post was
bogus. How does this help the credibility of the social media as a
medium? For instance, few days after members of the National Youth
Service Corp posted to Bauchi State went to camp, a section of the
social media posted falsehood that Boko Haram sect had attacked the
Bauchi camp and about 50 people killed.
It was soon discovered that the information was false and totally
mischievous. How can this be justified? Yet Senator Mark did not call
for sanctions against those who made such posts but called for a check
against such negative tendencies.
For the avoidance of doubts, the President of the Senate’s interest in
the media has never been hidden and he demonstrated this in his several
interfaces with the stakeholders of the industry before the passage of
the Freedom of Information Bill by the 6th National Assembly.
Even at the Umuahia event, he expressed kind words for the media and its
conscientious operators by saluting “the courage, doggedness and
steadfastness of the Nigerian media.” Senator Mark also acknowledged the
fact that “the press has been in the vanguard for the promotion and
sustenance of democracy we now enjoy. Even the struggle for independence
was pioneered and fought for by the Nigerian media.
“Sometimes I do disagree with you, but the media generally has fared
well. They can still do more by deliberately planning and sustaining the
efforts to bridge the information gap between the leaders and the led.
The press can achieve this if it applies the basic principles of
patriotism, accountability, transparency, and objectivity in the
discharge of its duty.”
Is it not curious that some social media activists turned the table
against Senator Mark by concocting lies and ascribing them to him? Was
it for nothing that they ignored the details of his printed speech? Was
there an agenda to deliberately denigrate his personage and cast a slur
on his hard earned reputation? How else can one rationalize the
insistence of some social media activists that Senator Mark called for
the censorship of the medium even when his speech showed clearly that he
never made such a call?
Perhaps one would have ignored some of the ridiculous posts but for the
successive analysis that have been following. It is suspect that in most
of these analyses of this hoax, there are subtle attempts to foist a
label of “social media must be censored” on the Senate President. This
is mischievous, irresponsible, wicked and unjust agenda that will not
stick.
Senator Mark did not make any gaffes in his keynote address to the
Senate Press Corps on the role of the media in promoting good
governance.
Rather, his critics, who have continually ignored the text of his address which he read in the public, are mischief makers.
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