Nigeria’s elite broadcast watchdog, the National Broadcasting Commission, NBC, has challenged media houses in Anambra State to observe decency and provide fair and equitable playing ground in their reporting of the November sixth governorship election.
The Director General of NBC, Mr. Balarabe Ilelah, gave the challenge at a one-day sensitization workshop organized for media executives and broadcast houses in Anambra State aimed at equipping them with the right guidelines for political broadcast and also help them adjust to the legal frameworks guiding election reportage.
Daniel Ezeigwe reports that the one-day sensitization workshop, with the theme “Towards Achieving a Successful Election: The Need to Uphold Fair Play, Decency and Equity”, also provided blueprints for broadcasters in the forthcoming election, including the timeframe legally allowed for partisan reportage, and directives for reporting electoral issues that fall within or outside the confines of the Nigeria Broadcast Code.
Welcoming the participants, Mr. Ilelah, represented by the Director, Broadcast Monitoring, Mrs. Franca Aiyetan, urged broadcasters to ensure that their platforms are not used to disseminate falsehood, hate or preach violence and other anti-social messages, noting that the NBC is expecting all media houses in the state to show professionalism and exclude bias in their political broadcasts, in line with statutory guidelines for political media coverages in Nigeria.
Speaking on behalf the media heads that attended the workshop, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the ABS, Dr Uche Nworah, who promised to retrain staff on the knowledge of the NBC codes, appealed to the commission to always engage in diplomacy instead of immediate sanctions in rare cases when a media station errs.
Dr Nworah noted that media heads in the state have also been helping to ensure that staff follow the legal broadcast guidelines through self-monitoring, stressing that the only way to build a robust relationship with regulators is by doing the right thing.
In a vote of thanks, the Enugu Zonal Director of NBC, Mrs. Ijeoma Theo-Obodo, said that she was counting on participants to maximize the information gained from the workshop to help the commission serve better.
Representatives of the Department of State Security, Anambra State, Nigeria Police Force, Anambra State Command, Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, Anambra State also gave their inputs to the discussion.
The workshop also featured question and answer sessions.
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