When the envelop is brown (1)

Almost from its inception, the management of Media Trust Limited found it necessary to issue this appeal to the public published regularly under the headline, “No, Thank You”:

·Media Trust Limited journalists have pledged to uphold the Company’s policy of not asking or taking a gift by whatever name from those they encounter in the course of their work.

·Please assist us by not seeking to influence our reporters and editors with your favours. Where they can, our journalists are expected to graciously decline a gift. When it is pressed on them, they are expected to declare it. The Company will write a letter thanking the giver and donating the amount to charity.

·Help us produce newspapers you can trust.

I believe this important statement, at one time or the other, must have caught the attention, even if briefly, of the serious readers of the Trust titles. I cannot but accept that the management of the company is right in its decision to keep the public from compromising its editors and reporters and soiling the integrity of its titles. It is a courageous thing to do. It is also a tough act, a very tough act.

Still, it is easy to appreciate the concern of the company. Its primary aim in taking this step is to instil in and impress upon its editors and reporters the importance of ethical conduct in the discharge of their reportorial duties. It is a good thing for a media company to take such actions as it may deem necessary to ensure that its editors and reporters are not compromised by the brown envelop and put its newspapers to a cheap use for their personal gains. Every newspaper is in mortal fear of a smear on its integrity. But few take the necessary steps to be clean islands in the cesspool of corrupt tendencies. Editors and reporters hold the key to the reputation of a newspaper. By their conduct, the public learns to either trust or distrust their publication.

Politicians, the serious and the jokers among them, crave publicity. And because they believe all journalists have a price, they are prepared to pay any price to have a good but false public image. The management found it necessary to repeatedly underline its message because it is also quite possible that the anti-corruption war could suck editors and reporters into the murk of our once powerful men and women being exposed daily with palm oil on their fingers. Evil men and women at critical moments tend to hitch their wagons to the news media to pull them out of their rut into which their greed drove them.

This is a difficult time for us all. The difficulties of an economy in recession are better imagined than experienced. At least 21 state governments are unable to pay the monthly salaries of their civil servants. At times like these, the media houses as well as their editors and reporters become vulnerable. Consequently, the ubiquity of the brown envelop becomes more pronounced. Policing their editors and reporters inevitably assumes a monumental challenge for media owners and managers.

I am afraid, our news media are somewhat tainted by the bad behaviour of some media owners and managers. I am saying nothing new in pointing out that some unscrupulous editors and reporters are invariably wealthier than their employers. A few years ago, a young American student in Harvard University was in Lagos to research into media corruption in third world countries. No, do not think of this as our being the whipping boys of the world. He talked to me about the situation in our country. And he surprised me when he said that in one of the newspapers (name withheld) he visited, some of the reporters told him that when the owner employed them newly, he gave them their staff identity cards and said, ‘this is your meal ticket.’

In making this appeal to the public, Media Trust Limited raises an important issue that confronts individuals and professional groups alike. I refer, of course, to ethics, the six-letter word with a 2,500- year history. The famous Greek philosopher, Socrates, was perhaps the first man in history to elevate the word to the height of mores and morals.

Ethics is an extremely powerful word in the affairs of men and women. All professional and even religious groups try to police the conduct of their members and adherents to ensure that their moral or, if you insist, ethical behaviour, conforms to the image of the group by whatever name it is called. Image is a child of ethics. Without the right image, the reputation of individuals and organisations dance in the wind. An organisation separates itself from the crowd by what it makes of its ethical code of conduct, written or unwritten, but still faithfully observed and enforced. (To be concluded)