The Problem of Living by the Pen
“No remedy is around yet to safeguard the journalist from those Who regard truth as attack. Many in authority and others in the Public eye see the reporter as an enemy.”
Attack means the same thing as journalism to many Nigerians, journalists included. Dele, many people ask, why did you attack Jakande? Dele, others come running, Bayo Osiyemi attacked you. Daily Times, more than few people say with indignation, doesn’t attack the government on this and that. Attack, attack, they demand. Most of the letters to the editor attack something or somebody. And when not attacking, the letters lecture. Journalists themselves have somehow got things mixed up. They hardly write news stories, but assume the position of prophets who have answers to every social problem under the skies. They preach to readers and tell them how to live their lives. Somehow along the way, someone forgets what journalism is all about, that all a journalist is supposed to do is to go out to collect materials for stories that he must write in clean, clear and simple prose.
When it comes to discussing what a feature story is, matters even get more confusing. And nobody suffers more for the confusion than the features editor. He is forced into a corner from where he must fling copies back at his colleagues who mistake their views for stories. Or he si turned into a sudden diplomat who must find ways to explain features to his colleagues who regard themselves as feature writers. Few people understand that every story in a newspaper has only one purpose: to inform. And that a feature story only differs from a spot story only in approach. “Most reporters,” says William E. Burrows in On Reporting The Times,” can write ‘Councilman, So-and-So-yesterday’ stories in their sleep by their third year on the job.”
“Having learned the lead (intro) and body formulae and absorbed’ the necessary style,” Burrow writes, “they can apply them to any immediate news story” and get out the story for the reader without as much as writing in the aesthetic meaning of the word “write.” But a feature writer is supposed to be more than a reporter in that he must have the ability to combine reporting and writing. A reporter becomes a feature writer when he can get a story and milk from it the juice that an ordinary reporter will not see. But milking the juice will not be enough, he must make it either so sweet that the reader will smack his lips and be happy, or he must make it so bitter that the reader will taste the bile and he moved to a desired reaction. But doing this is not supposed to take the route of lecturing readers or inciting unnecessary bitterness through tasteless attacks. While such attacks may find space in editorial opinion columns, they must not appear in news spaces, spots or features.
One of the reasons journalists in Nigeria run into trouble with the law is the mistaken view that a journalist is a bull pen who can throw his weight all over the place only to find out that he is making himself delectable for the prisons. Which is not to say that journalists are often not picked up for doing nothing more than their job of getting stories and writing them in responsible and restrained language. No remedy is around yet to safeguard the journalist from those who regard truth as attack. That’s actually the problem. Too many people don’t understand the duty of a reporter and his newspaper. Many in authority and others in the public eye see the reporter as an enemy. Sometimes when he unearths the truth and publishes it, he is called an attacker. But other times, when he gets the truth, he becomes self-righteous and destroys his good reporting with bad writing. All these things need to be said because the journalist, in his fight for freedom of the press, needs the support of the public. He will not get it if he is arrogant and condescending. That’s why in writing either a feature or spot news, he must remember that he is not a lecturer or a prosecutor, but a carrier of information.
©Daily Times, May 23, 1979.
(Pp.9-10)
