BY NDUMBE BELL JOSEPH GASTON IN DOUALA
Journalists have been told to preserve the ethics of the profession by avoiding qualifiers that tilt or hinge towards advertisements and public relations in reporting events.
Instead, practitioners should uphold the profession by telling the story as it is using the fine line that avoids advertisements and public relations.
The precautionary event was held at the Douala Regional LinguisticCentre as part of activities to celebrate the World Press Freedom Day sponsored by the American Government through their embassy in Cameroon at a time when the profession is at risk in many countries of the world.
At the introductory stage of the event in the presence of senior officials of the centre and over 10 media houses or press representatives, the Director of the Centre Mme Nama threw light to the various centre activities such as entrepreneurship, the economy, the library and English training among others and then concluded that the present activity falls under education. She introduced the key speaker in the person of Dr Charles Akoh.
Charles Akoh presenting his focus, said news reporting, public relations and advertising have their styles of presentation even though they are all segments of the mass media but news writing is not as persuasive as the others because one presents the news as it is and leave the public to judge after setting the pace that generates debates. In the public relations and advertisements, there is forcible judgement; PR and Ads use a lot of qualifiers to persuade the public to see things the way they want.
He criticised the 1990 law which allows anyone who can gather and process information to become a journalist (eg. the yellow heads etc).
That, Dr. Akoh continued, has brought us to the conundrum that we find ourselves.Some of the juxtapositions that haunt the profession should be redirected and reshaped since news tells what is new without twisting the information, reason why he said he was bothered about the thin line which explains the theme. When news articles use qualifiers the news now becomes baised. “it is because we are not economically independent, some of our captions are arranged to attract what he called payola. Captions should show the importance of a news item in any publication.
Another aspect which Dr. Akoh examined was the international trend of news reporting where there is the practice of news media having the tendency of introducing propaganda. For example, the Russia-Ukraine war-the position of Africa in it.
However, he said there is nothing like total freedom. So, if a journalist who sees that a certain event can cause total chaos, it is also good to avoid. He condemned impressive qualifiers where there is an exaggeration of attendancein an occasion blown beyond proportion done by many especially some cameramen who spin by regularly showing a small number to substantiate the qualifier. This type of presentations are some of the reason why we are not usually qualified to be recruited by international media because one has been evaluated and lost credibility.
Reacting, a cross-section of media practitionersshared experiences to demonstrate situation where they are forced to do as they are told; sometimes by some media owners who are not professionals. Dr Akoh asked whoever is promoting qualifiers to persuade news reporting to desist from the practice, in brief.s