#TrackNigeria: I hope I am not being presumptuous if I say that the topic of our discussion today could not have come at a more auspicious time than in this season of mutual recriminations and distrust between two institutions that are among those vital to the existence of a peaceful society: the military and the media.
I made this claim against the background of the fact that the year 2019 opened on a sour note in the relationship between the military and the media. Soldiers, armed to the teeth as if they were geared towards confronting a coalition of terrorists from ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram, on January 6, 2019, stormed the head office of DAILY TRUST in Abuja and the regional office in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, to seize equipment and arrest officials of the national newspaper.
The invasion set off a global outrage as stakeholders such as the Newspapers Publishers’ Association of Nigeria, the Nigerian Guild of Editors, Nigeria Union of Journalists, International Press Institute and civil society organisations slammed the military for trying to kill a mosquito with a sledgehammer.
The military invasion was triggered off by the lead story in the Sunday edition of DAILY TRUST on military operations in the North East, the epicentre of the anti-insurgency exercise by the military against Boko Haram, which according to the Human Rights Watch in its 2018 World Report, has caused the deaths of over 20,000 civilians in eight years. In addition, the terror activities of Boko Haram has set off a large-scale humanitarian crisis that has displaced 2.1 million people and leaving about 7 million people in need of humanitarian help.
While I would not like to dwell further on this unfortunate incident in order to give chance to ongoing efforts to heal the wounds in order to forge a better relationship between the military and the media, I hope lessons have been learnt by both parties that would guide against a future recurrence.
Before I go further, let me make a confession. The topic for discussion today is one that I cannot afford to play to the gallery because it is an issue that of interest to me given my double hats as the team leader of a national newspaper organisation, NEW TELEGRAPH and as President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors.
I, however, assured this gathering that I should be impartial and dispassionate in my presentation today.
It is towards achieving that objective that I have decided to adopt a dual approach in my presentation. This involves looking at the issue from both an academic angle and giving an industrial perspective to enrich my submission.
TERRORISM AND NATIONAL SECURITY: THE NEXUS
In treating this topic, I will like to first discuss some of the underpinning concepts such as terrorism and national security to enhance our understanding of the topic.
Defining the concept of terrorism is as tricky and as controversial as the activities of terrorist groups. This is because terrorism is such an emotive issue that it elicits varied reactions from different people and nations. This can be gleaned from the fact today’s terrorist could be a hero tomorrow. At a point during the anti-apartheid struggles, former British Prime Minister, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, referred to the jailed leader of African National Congress (ANC), Nelson Mandela, as a terrorist. She was to later call for his release just as Mandela went on eventually to emerge as the first South African black president.
The US and some of it allies regard Hamas, an organisation fighting for the recognition of a Palestinian state, as a terrorist group. But to Turkey and other nations that support it, Hamas is a political actor in the Middle East.
According to Prof. Ariel Merari of International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, Tel Aviv University, “a major hindrance in the way of achieving a widely-accepted definition of political terrorism is the negative emotional connotation of the term… People use the term as a disapproving label for a whole variety of phenomena which they do not like…”
There are, therefore, many definitions of terrorism but we shall examine a few. A special committee set up in 2003 by the United Nations proposed the definition of terrorism to refer to “any action […] that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, when the purpose of such an act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organisation to do or to abstain from doing any act.”
A paper, written by an author simply identified as Rodrigo, and published on the website of the WritePass journal, defined terrorism as “the systematic use of violence in order to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby bring about a particular political objective.”
Although other scholars have defined terrorism in broader ways, the UN committee’s and Rodrigo’s definitions are apt for our discussion. This is because they fit perfectly with the Nigerian experience as propagated by Boko Haram, the most violent and best-organised non-state actors to have taken up arms against the Federal Government since 1914 when Lord Frederick Lugard amalgamated the Northern and Southern Protectorates to form this nation of ethnic mosaic called Nigeria.
The terror group has deployed violence, and aided by propaganda, to achieve its objectives, which has mutated from a campaign for the abolition of Western education in the North East to the enthronement of an Islamic caliphate in Nigeria.
The Boko Haram insurgency confronted the government with an asymmetric warfare that the nation’s security architecture was not designed to tackle.
The nation’s military that have creditably discharged itself in many international operations that have earned it laurels from many organisations, including the United Nations, has been overwhelmed by many factors outside its control to restore normalcy in the North East.
Not even the civil war, which the Nigerian military successfully fought and brought to an end within three years, were the military confronted with some of the challenges that it has encountered in ending the Boko Haram insurgency.
However, despite the challenges, it speaks to the doggedness and efficiency of the military that it has succeeded in pushing back the terror group, which hitherto controlled 17 local government areas in the North East…
Now that we are done with examining the concept of terrorism and situating it within the context of the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, it is time to shift focus to the concept of national security.
The idea of national security is as ancient as nationhood
Right from creation, humankind has always been concerned about how to safeguard the society for the protection and the good of all. The first idea of national security is embedded in the postulation that human beings need to surrender some of their basic rights to their representatives saddled with the responsibility of superintending over the society’a affairs so that all could be safe. The initial idea was to protect the people against social renegades such as petty thieves, robbers and hired killers. This concept was also extended to the protection of individual and collective rights to property.
However, as the society grew and social relationship became more complex, there emerged the need to rethink the idea of national security and expand the frontier for human preservation.
Among modern nations, national security “refers to the security of a national state, including its citizens, economy and institutions, and is regarded as a duty of government”(Wikipedia).
A former US Secretary of Defence, Harold Brown, views national security as “the ability to preserve the nation’s physical integrity and territory; to maintain its economic relations with the rest of the world on reasonable terms; to preserve its nature, institution and governance from disruption from outside; and to control its borders.”
Ingrained in this definition are some of the basic principles that undergirded the ancient concept of national security. But unlike in the historic era, modern nations have to confront not only petty thieves, robbers and less malignant social renegades, but violent and better organised and resourceful state and non-state actors such fifth columnists in government, the opposition, drug and crime cartels, multinational corporations and natural disasters.
We should also bear in mind that there is a nexus between national security and the state of technological advancement of a national. That is why in modern times, especially in this age of the internet, national security has gone beyond the fear of possible military attacks by foreign enemy combatants and other non-state actors… The internet has extended the concept of national security to the extent that ideas about military warfare now encompass cyber-attacks.
Two classical examples on how cybercrime affects national security are seen in how Edward Snowden and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks stealthily acquired highly classified information from the US National Security Agency and other secret American documents that compromised the US national security.
Also, the US 2016 presidential election might have been won and lost, but it has turned out to be a pyrrhic victory for President Donald Trump. He has been under probe by a special investigator over the allegations that Russia gamed the US electoral process to aid his ascendancy to power.
The scope of the investigation, being conducted by a special team, headed by Robert Mueller, covers the campaign period to Trump’s assumption of office, in order to protect the US national security.
The advent of the internet has given sponsors and actors actively engaged in terrorism more latitude and capacity to operate. They have deployed technology in planning and executing attacks, recruiting more followers and for logistics.
It has also raised greater concern about how far reaching terrorism impinges on national security.
However, some scholars have argued that in some instances, there are overexaggerated concerns about terrorism and national security that have led to over-militarisation of responses to terror attacks. This has also provided government the excuse to clamp down on the media, civil society organisations and other critical stakeholders. The “war on terror” has become a justification for the introduction of repressive counter-terrorism legislations by some nations that further constrict civil liberties and raise concerns about the likelihood of the government becoming tyrannical.
MEDIA AS OXYGEN OF TERRORISM
Terror groups such as ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram would not have gained the global notoriety that they have if there had been no media to magnify their messages of fear and to bring their atrocities to millions of home across the world.
Boko Haram gained more notoriety after its militants abducted some 270 schoolgirls from Chibok, Borno State in 2014. Although the abduction was less in magnitude compared to a much earlier attack on Baga, in which the death toll was put at about 2,000, the kidnapping got the group some mention on prime time news on some international network such as BBC, CNN and prominence in some major international newspapers.
The media are important to terror groups because they provide a vehicle of attracting attention and spreading their messages; albeit unwittingly.
Some communication scholars and other researchers see the media as “accomplices” for giving terrorists the oxygen of publicity. There is this widely-held belief that the mass media promote terrorism by stressing fear and uncertain future through their reportage of terror activities. This theory is anchored on the belief that terrorists intentionally created “incidents” to attract media attention and as a vehicle for passing their messages to the people and to political authorities.
In his contribution to the discourse on media and terrorism, Brian Jenkins in 1995 wrote: “Terrorists attacks are often carefully choreographed to attract the attention of the electronic media and the international press. Terrorism is aimed at the people watching, not at the victims.”
According to Jean Paul Marthoz in the book, TERRORISM and the MEDIA: A Handbook for Journalists, ” many of the violent attacks we see playing out today are partly conceived with media coverage in mind, targeting not just the actual victims but millions of shocked and shaken spectators across the globe.”
That was why an Algerian political activist and revolutionary, Ramdane Abane, would in1956 wondered whether it was not better to kill 10 enemies in a remote gully “when no one will talk of it” or “a single man in Algiers, which will be noted the next day” by audiences in distant nations who could influence policy makers.
However, Marthoz added that the characterisation of the media as the oxygen chamber of terrorism “does not imply actual sympathy felt or displayed for terrorist groups, but rather refers to the publicity that they provide them and consequently the power of nuisance that they grant them.”
This concern has led to the advocacy that the media should either consider downplaying stories on terrorism or impose a blackout on terrorist attacks.
But can the media afford to blackout coverage of terrorism? This looks like a tall order because terror is vital news that the public need to know about and understand in order to curb the outbreak of irrational fear.
In addition, the media economy is anchored on competition to gain more readers and audiences. A significant portion of media audience and readership will be alienated and this could have dire consequences for the balance sheet of many media organisations.
MEDIA’S ‘INFERNAL DILEMMA’
The relationship between the media in the reportage of terrorism and the crime assumed a global concern in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in the US. Researchers, according to Charlie Beckett in a paper, FANNING THE FLAMES: REPORTING TERROR IN A NETWORKED WORLD, have found out that the media report terror events in such a way that can spread fears and confusion.
There are also concerns that news coverage can provide the publicity the terrorist seeks and that the social media “amplifies the communicative scale and impact of terrorism, and it adds to the misinformation and emotional responses to terror events (Beckett).”
According to American historian, Walter Laqueur, “it has been said that journalists are terrorists’ best friends, because they are willing to give terrorist operations maximum exposure. This is not to say that journalists as a group are sympathetic to terrorists, although it may appear so. It simply means that violence is news, whereas peace and harmony are not. The terrorists need the media and the media find in terrorism all the ingredients of an exciting story.”
Unfortunately, government and many people would not agree with Laqueur that when it comes to covering terrorism, the media are torn by two loyalties. They have to strike the balance between discharging their primary responsibility to provide timely and accurate information to citizens who need it to make life-changing decisions and the authorities that expect restraint on matters bordering on national security.
The media provide the oxygen terrorism needs to be impactful and spread; and denied of that lifeline, it dies of asphyxiation.
In reporting terrorism, journalists are erroneously cast as terror sympathisers and enablers by political and military authorities, especially when they refuse to help in concealing the inefficiencies and human rights abuses by state security personnel.
Military officials, especially, see members of the armed forces as super patriots who risk their lives to protect the nations and its people. This sexed-up narrative gives military personnel an exaggerated sense of importance that goads them to indulge in wanton rights abuses.
They hide under national security to unleash repression on the media and others as a step towards silencing the opposition.
But military personnel are not the superior professionals that they make them to believe they are or are journalists less patriotic.
Political and military authorities ignore the fact that the media and the armed forces are partners and they need to work together, irrespective of their turbulent relationship, to succeed. History has shown that the fight against terrorism, just like any other war, cannot be won through military superiority alone. If it were so, ISIS, like Al-Qaeda, would have become history by know.
One of the factors attributed to the challenges the US military faced in the Vietnam War was lack of support from the home media. The US media mobilised public opinion against the war triggering a rash of draft dodging, despite the dire consequences, and pressure on the political leadership to end the war and bring back home American troops.
On the other hand, the media cannot operate smoothly and profitably too in a war atmosphere, which negatively affects the incomes and purchasing power of the people. But they thrive better in an atmosphere that is nationally secured.
How the media balance their acts in reporting terrorism without either endangering national security or getting into trouble with military authorities, depend on the extent of press freedom they enjoy, the economic resources at their disposal, cultural factors and the social role of the media.
\HAZARDS AND LIMITATIONS OF REPORTING TERRORISM
The media face so many hurdles in ensuring effective coverage of terrorism. One of such is how to strike the balance between pushing enough information to the public without breaching national security and offending people’s sensibility. As we have discussed earlier, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to doing so.
Sometimes, even the public get turned off by the coverage. Paul Chadwick, writing in THE GUARDIAN of London on June 9, 2017, reported the outrage of some readers over the newspaper’s coverage of the London Bridge terror attack
“Get those names and photos of those murderous cowards off your front page,” he quoted a reader as writing to the newspaper.
“Fame, even posthumous, is what they want, and currently newspapers and other news sources are giving them exactly that,” Chadwick quoted another reader as saying in a letter to THE GUARDIAN of London.
How the media report terrorism is crucial because it reflects their position within the society and their coverage determines the impact of terrorism on the society.
“The media are caught in an infernal dilemma. On the one hand, the media echo is likely to make victims the unintentional messengers of their executioners’ search for glory; on the other hand, self-censorship could be interpreted as capitulation,” writes French lawyer, Antoine Garapon.
Terrorism also tests the freedom and independence of the media. It attempts to compromise their values and responsibility to readers and audiences. For example, unlike in the coverage of other news events, in processing terrorism stories, the media, by calculation or under external influence, choose to follow government directives or public opinion at the risk of self-censorship or becoming amplifiers for state powers.
The likelihood of suppressing facts because of national security creates distrust between the media and their audiences. The media should know that in covering terrorism, disseminating too much information is as dangerous as too little information. Too much information could provide terrorist groups, who monitor media content with fierce dedication, about ideas about counter-insurgency measures and endanger military operations and lives of troops.
On the hands, providing too little information in order to protect national security could foist a false sense of safety on the people and mislead them into taking decisions that could cost them their lives or other losses.
Beckett, quoting the US television channel, CBS, observed that self-censorship “can undermine the credibility of the media…, give free rein to the craziest rumours and disrupt our sense of information.”
Another challenge facing the media is to what extent they can report terrorism without appearing to be glorifying the crime. There are some journalists, who in their career have managed to gain the confidence of some of these violence entrepreneurs and have some access to them. Such journalists, like Ahmed Salkida, who has some top Boko Haram commanders as sources, have been severally accused of glorifying terrorism by trying to tell the story from their perspective to make the world understand them better and as a prelude to helping authorities to proffer solutions to the menace they have become to the society.
One of the cardinal rules in journalism is the need to cross check facts, no matter how reliable the sources have been in the past. This rule is even more germane in the coverage of terrorism as the media in most cases are often purveyors of third parties’ information through press statements and other audio visual materials by both the military and terrorist groups and eye witness accounts. But research has shown that many of the accounts of terror attacks by third parties are exaggerated and not a true reflection of the events as they happened.
This therefore raises the need for the media to be cautious not to validate propaganda materials either from the military or terrorist groups.
The advent of the social media has altered the flow of information and broken media’s monopoly as disseminators. It has also led to the emergence of citizen journalism and give individuals power to create and push media content. Some of those engaged in citizen journalism could be either sympathisers or members of a terrorist organisation and the media, therefore, need to properly scrutinise any materials taken from social media accounts of members of the public.
The social media has also empowered terrorist groups to create content more targeted at spreading fears and recruiting members. The social media accounts of terrorist groups have therefore become veritable news sources for journalists.
Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, on many occasions had used social media channel YouTube to release videos either to taunt government or to announce that his group was behind certain attacks. He had deployed this method effectively to give the world “progress report” on the abducted Chibok girls.
In reporting events through third parties, the media need to make full disclosure to the public whether they were able to independently confirm claims by non-affiliate officials or not to safeguard the credibility of the news media.
Covering terrorism or war is also one of the most challenging beats journalists can be assigned to in his career. Like soldiers on war front, you live daily with the risk of death and other associated dangers. Besides, there is also the lesser danger of persecution and harassment by political and military authorities over your reports.
Many journalists have been killed on duty by either terror groups or other criminal cartels. A report by the Committee to Protect Journalists, a special advocacy group, notes that of 69 journalists killed in 2015, 40 % died at the hands of militant groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
Another report by the online version of THE NEW REPUBLIC, published on December19, 2018, notes that at least 34 journalists were killed last year due to their reports. This represents an 89% increase over the death toll for 2017.
Ten of the journalists were killed in a targeted attack by ISIS elements in Kabul, Afghanistan, in April 2018.
In Nigeria, the Boko Haram insurgency has led to the deaths of three journalists and the bombing of THISDAY Abuja and Kaduna offices.
Two journalists, Nansok Sallah of HIGHLAND FM RADIO, Jos and Enenche Akogwu, Kano State correspondent of CHANNELS TV were killed in 2012 while on duty. NEW TELEGRAPH Managing Editor (Northern Operations), Suleiman Bisalla, was killed in a non-work-related terror attack. He was one of the victims of the June 2014 bombing of Banex Plaza, Abuja by Boko Haram.
The media also face the twin challenges of the law and military repression in the coverage of terrorism. The media are supposed to acquaint themselves with various legislations such as the Terrorism (Prevention) (Amendment) Act, 2013 and how much latitude they have to discharge their responsibility to their audiences.
Inasmuch as the media have the right and duty to inform in the name of public interest, that does not confer on them the right to breach the law.
According to Beckett, “published and be damned” is not applicable in the terror context.
One of the key areas where the media have performed not to expectation in the coverage of terrorism is in the use of images. It is therefore imperative for the media, especially in Nigeria, to be conscious of the fact that images are at the core of terrorism and that is why terrorist groups gleefully release pictures of their conquests and attacks to spite government and to extract cooperation from the civil populace.
In publishing or broadcasting pictures and videos of scenes of terror attacks Global News Director of the French news agency, Agence France-Press, Michèle Léridon, urged journalists to “strike a balance between (the) duty to inform the public… (the) concern for the dignity of the victims being paraded by extremists, and the need to avoid being used as a vehicle for hateful, ultraviolent propaganda.”
In some countries, security agencies usually request the media not to publish or broadcast certain images of terror attacks so as not to jeopardise ongoing military operations or not to cause panic among the people.
CONCLUSION
One of the factors that inhibits the forging of a mutually beneficial relationship between the military and the media is the existence of a communication gap induced by distrust. Poor information management by the military and poor understanding of how the media work have harmed what could have been a harmonious relationship between the two parties.
Due to certain operational constraints, many of the media organisations in Nigeria depend on foreign news outlets in reporting the Boko Haram insurgency. However, these foreign news outlets have their own agenda, which influences their reportage, and this could be at variance with Nigeria’s national interest.
Unfortunately, the military often make it difficult for journalists to cross check their reports by either failing to respond to further inquiries on such matters in time or giving foggy clarifications.
When in December 2018 the media reported that Boko Haram had retaken Baga after a bloody encounter with troops, Army spokesman, Brigadier General Sani Usman, was quick to deny the story. He claimed that the troops repelled the terrorists.
Army’s Chief of Operations, Major General Lamidi Adeosun, at a news conference in Maiduguri, corroborated Usman’s version of the event.
Well, that should have been the end of story, isn’t it? Perhaps not so fast. About two weeks later, the military gleefully announced that troops had dislodged Boko Haram from Baga and had regained control of the fishing community located in a strategic town on the shores of Lake Chad.
So, pray, which versions of the military’s spin are the media supposed to project to the public?
The Baga incident, just like some others of recent past, has necessitated the need for an urgent overhauling of the military media relations framework.
Inasmuch as the media owe it as a patriotic duty to assist the military in managing outcomes of counter-insurgency operations, they cannot do it at the expense of their most valuable asset: their credibility.
It is against this background that I call on the military to institute a forum where top military officers, especially those actively involved in counter-insurgency operations, periodically brief media chiefs on their challenges and successes. I will recommend that this type of forum should be patterned after a similar one by the Central Bank of Nigeria, which it holds under the Chatham House rules. The briefing is confidential and the rules forbid disclosure, in whatever form, of any issues discussed at the forum to outsiders.
The military also need to be proactive in managing information by reaching out more frequently to top news managers on how they could help to manage the coverage of major setbacks in the counter-insurgency operations instead of throwing them red herrings.
On their part, the media also need to develop guidelines, detailing specifics, on how to report terrorism. Some foreign media such as BBC, THE GUARDIAN of London, CNN, America’s CBS and AFP have such manuals.
The Nigerian Guild of Editors in collaboration with other major stakeholders in the media industry could provide a standard framework for such guidelines, which each media house could adapt to fit its peculiarities.
I rest my case. Thank you!
A paper presented by Managing Director, NEW TELEGRAPH NEWSPAPERS /President, Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), Mrs. Funke Egbemode
