By Azuka Okwosa (Media/Society Reporter)
For reporting offensive social media visuals and inaccurate stories about the alleged shooting in Lekki lagos during last week's youth protests, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), has slammed financial sanctions amounting to Three million Naira each on AIT, Channels and Arise News television stations.
The Commission says the offending broadcast stations violated the NBC's broadcasting code in reporting the #EndSARS protests.
Acting Director-General of NBC, Prof. Armstrong Adachaba, announced the sanction of the TV stations on Monday at a media briefing. He said the sanction is expected to deter the TV stations and their broadcasters to always conduct proper professional verifications on news items before airing them.
Idachaba also stated that his commission was concerned about the recent professional misconduct of some broadcasting stations since the youth protests began. He said that “In line with the provision of section 5.6.9 of the Nigeria Broadcasting Code which states that the broadcaster shall be held liable for any breach of the code emanation from the use of material from User Generated Sources, the commission, therefore, sanctioned Arise TV, Channels TV and AIT in line with the provision of the broadcasting code.
“Channels Television, Arise TV and AIT especially continued to transmit footages obtained from unverified and unauthenticated social media sources.No doubt, these pictures stimulated anger and heightened the violence that was witnessed during the #EndSARS crisis. If you escalate the violation that have emanated from the misuse of social media sources by broadcasting it will escalate the sanction.
“According to the provision of the law, we can comfortably shut them down because what they are doing is capable of breakdown of law and order. No responsible country will sit down and allow any form of media to bring down the country. Look at the level of damage and killings that happened on account of unverified news report.
“In line with the provision of the code section B which is heavy fine between N500, 000 to N5 million, we will communicate that to the affected stations depending on the magnitude of breaches. But none of them will pay less than N2 to N3 million and any further breach will led to the withdrawal of licence,’’ Idachaba said.
The NBC's acting Director General however warned the TV stations and their broadcasters against airing materials that could embarrass individuals, organisations or cause disaffection and incite to panic or rift in the society.
“We believe that the whole country has now seen why the spurious and recklessness on the social media must not be patronized by the mainstream traditional media.’’
Idachaba however condemned the attacks and intimidation of media houses, saying that the burning of TVC Lagos, the brief closure of Channels TV Lagos were worrisome and shows that the freedom press was indeed under severe threat. He pointed out that no nation can achieve growth when such freedom was curtailed by threats and intimidation of the press or muzzling the citizen's rights to free expression. NNL.
