Re: If Trust Is Burden

Re: If Trust Is Burden
I read Kofar Mata’s piece on the above caption. Nothing is farther from truth. When I read the Trust announcement, not the one placed October, but others before it; I was forced to go into the management’s staff list of the organisation’s website to check whether there is a change in the leadership structure. However, I found that there was none, I think the only addition was Mannir Dan Ali. Knowing Mannir well, and the Trust Editorial Board I know there is no way his coming can change the way Trust used to operate.
I re-read the announcement again to try to comprehend the meaning of the message. I have understood its contents very well. But my assumption was that, the announcement was not talking about the opinions we write to Trust papers, may be, they were referring to advertorial written by politicians accusing their opponents of some misdemeanors. And to exonerate itself, the Trust management felt the need to clarify to their esteemed readers on guidelines for submitting and publishing such materials.
But when I read Kofar Mata, it became clear to me that what the management of Trust Papers is doing does not augur well for the paper. As he sighted majority of Northern papers were out of market due to sycophancy, boot leaking and outright praise singing during the dark days of the military. No doubt the Trust papers have in recent time proved to us that they are taking a different approach to newspapering in Northern Nigeria. Their success in just ten years proved my assertion.
But it will be disastrous for them to restrict what ideas or comment to be published in the paper or suggest or even lay guidelines of publishing comments or debate. In today’s world nothing sells paper most like issues and debates raised in that paper and the management of Trust know fully that the paper became dear to us because of intellectual debates and comment with which they started and sustained over the years since the inception of the paper. It is wrong and indeed very wrong to change from that. We will not and can never accept that.
While acknowledging their concern for accuracy and fairness it is equally important for the management of Trust to know that any change in content will definitely jeopardize its reputation built over the years. I could remember in 1989-1992 I suspended reading the Hotline magazine completely and could not listen to Radio Nigeria because of the way the media houses approached issues especially here in the North. In fact, I boycotted all papers and magazines from the North at the time because of what Kofar Mata said.
When the Weekly Trust appeared in 1998, I was also reluctant to read it, until when I saw the likes of Adamu Adamu, (because he is one journalist who many testified that he is honest and trustworthy and defied the powers that be in the military days and after it in speaking what he believes as right). The contents of the paper proved irresistible with pages like the Friday Column by Tilde and many who showed a shift from the old order. We realized that Trust is not like the Northern papers before it.
Please do not allow some people to destroy the reputation you built over the years or allow it to be shattered by sycophancy and desperateness to defend ‘our own’. Tell magazine faced similar problem after the demise of Abacha and the coming of Obasanjo.
In a news story, if someone or an institution is accused, the need to look for the other side of the story is compulsory. But for an opinion, unless the writer uses abusive or incisive language, I see no fault in publishing it. If the accused felt what was said was not true, then you provide right of reply. It was Michael Novak who said, in his Media Debate, ‘there are no facts ‘out there’ apart from human observers. And human observers become not more, but less astute when they try to be neutral…’
New approaches in news reporting like interpretive reporting, investigative journalism and citizen-oriented journalism are what will make a paper different from its competitors. Your contributors provide you with a hint and is left to you to put your reporters to further investigation to come out with the truth of any matter raised.
Kabiru Danladi
Lawanti Village, KM25, Along Gombe-Bauchi Road
Akko LGA, Gombe State.
Kblondon2003@yahoo.com
08054546764, 08035150369