@ SIXTEEN Daily Trust has brought balance to news reporting, national discourse
The newspaper is celebrating its 16th anniversary. What is your impression of the publication’s performance over the years?
Daily Trust
First, let me start by saying a very big congratulation to the board, management and staff of the Daily Trust publication because to survive the turbulence of the newspaper business in Nigeria is a major achievement.
One has watched with admiration how the Daily Trust has grown from a fledgling newspaper to a national newspaper that is widely circulated, widely read and widely respected. The Daily Trust publications bring a different but very robust perspective to the profession in the way they report national issues.
The good thing about the paper when it was established is that it began to provide some balance in the national discourse in terms of the way it was reported in the media. What I mean is that the media industry in Nigeria is southbased, especially Lagos. So the media generally tended to reflect the point of view that the other side saw as unfavourable or not balanced. To that extent, the coming of Daily Trust has served the very good purpose of providing that balance. And Daily Trust has done exceedingly well in this regard.
The implication of the Nigerian media industry being south-dominated is that a huge swathe of this country is under-reported. Even in the south, beyond the immediate catchment area of the Nigerian media, how many stories do we read of Ebonyi State, for instance, let alone far north like Zamfara State? That is one major defect that the Daily Trust has worked to rectify by reporting the North much more broadly and challenging the rest of the media to do the same thing.
I also must commend the paper for its high editorial standard that it has maintained from Day One, which has been largely responsible for its survival of the turbulence of the newspaper business in Nigeria. We all know the high mortality rate of news publications in this country. Newspapers come and go at a high casualty rate. So for the Daily Trust to be marking its 16th anniversary still going strong is a big achievement and I hope it will continue to fly higher and higher.
What would you advise the board, management and staff of to do to sustain that height?
Daily Trust
The profession generally is lacking something very significant, which is that there is less emphasis now on real reporting; all we do now is just publish stories, publish editorial pages. What I find distressing in Nigerian news publications, not just the Daily Trust, but even our own TELL magazine, is that there is no real, serious reporting anymore.
In those days, we wouldn’t wait for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to give us handouts before we reported it; we would have reported its case, with value added, before it even announced it. That is what is lacking now. Given the pivotal role the Daily Trust has played not only in the newspaper industry but in the nation’s affairs generally, it has the responsibility, like the rest of the media, to begin to address that weakness.
What is happening presently is that the EFCC will issue a statement that so so so has done this and the next day, the newspapers publish it exactly like that without any value added. Okay, the EFCC has said something about somebody and the first thing a good reporter wants to do is get across to the person to say the EFCC has said something about him and what is his own side of the story. You would be surprised that by the time you hear the other side of the story, the story would give a more interesting, more informative and a balanced dimension. The story changes.
That is not happening anymore and it is a big problem for the Nigerian media generally. This is why Nigerian news publications have lost readership over the years as the quality of our content has dropped in the last 20 years, which is very sad.
What I further find distressing about our manner of reporting and columnists is that we are too selfopinionated. You read many columnists and discover that they are not really illuminating on issues we have to contend with every day.
What is your take on the editorial philosophy of the
Daily Trust?
Well, every newspaper defines its philosophy and what its editorial bent should be. I don’t see anything wrong with the editorial philosophy of the Daily Trust so long it advances the cause of building a nation we all truly feel we belong to. That is the primary responsibility and obligation of any serious publisher or newspaper. To that extent, I will say the Daily Trust has lived up largely to its editorial philosophy.
I see Daily Trust as a newspaper that has avoided controversy. You don’t see Daily Trust report sensational stories, which is laudable and which is what has sustained its credibility. In the new media milieu we operate now, with the advent of the internet and all that, the news cycle has shortened to just a matter of seconds, so there is the pressure, the tendency to be first out there with the news. When there is a news break, you want to be on top of it. In the process, we’ve stopped paying attention to those things that really make a story credible. The question is: what are you really putting out there? An example is the nonsense about the death of the President. It is utter nonsense.
It is only the social media that can do such things. It is unfortunate that one bad thing that Nigerian newspapers are doing now is that they are quoting online media whose notoriety for sensationalism and unconfirmed stories we all know. When the mainstream media begin to rely on online media as sources for their stories, I get very worried. The privilege we have as the Fourth Estate of the Realm comes with a huge responsibility.
What thrills you most about
Daily Trust?
For Daily Trust to have survived for 16 years and still thriving, despite the difficult operating industry environment, is a major achievement. Its emergence as the 2016 Nigeria Media Merit Award (NMMA) Newspaper of the Year is well-deserved. I will be the last person to doubt the integrity of the NMMA. It is highly respected and is the premier media award in Nigeria.
For the NMMA board to have deemed the Daily Trust worthy of that award, seriously, the paper is worthy of that award. It was very, very well deserved. I can only hope the Daily Trust will win more of such high-profile awards.