Vacuous Information

We have next to nothing when it comes to proper information on happenings in the country especially as it pertains to research-based findings. The chaff that's left of the havoc the internet wrecked on print media here is fighting a survival war. This has left them largely susceptible to commercialisation of news reports founded on sensationalism. And that is bad for us readers as it is for the practice of journalism.

Time was when you read about a story not in isolation but along with other related information, interviews, counter-views, balanced reportage and even a cut out that provides you with a background of related events and stories that afford you a better comprehension of the story being reported in itself. But it appears the influence of uncorroborated social media gutter journalism has taken hold.

What you observe today in the print (and replicated on the journos' websites) are news reports with titles meant to seduce readers into thinking along the line of what isn't reflected in the news articles. One is left wondering if perchance one picked the wrong news article having read through it without seeing the connection to its title.

If that isn't enough, there is the vexatious issue of an "apparent" lack of credible sources of information. You read a huge headline that's splashed across the front-page/screen with zero credible source. Then you come across them artfully dodging that credibility problem with the excuse that 'XYZ' couldn't be reached for comments, or calls to their phones weren't answered.

AND YOU PUBLISHED?

The offenders even go as far as quoting the tweets and or Facebook account posts of nobodies as their source of publishable information. This against the logic of looking out for confirmed account users on Facebook and Twitter who have had their statuses confirmed by the social networking platform and who are clearly identified by the stamp of true identification (a check mark [√] beside their profile names passes for this identification in most cases).

To add salt to the festering sore, they quote some authentic sources out of context for their own nefarious ends. On this score, the eminent professor, Wole Soyinka, had had cause to berate some pushers of the pen. I hear he no longer grants interviews to some persons of the media and their media institutions. It's that bad!

What comes out of this is a cesspool of miasmic information bankruptcy. And it is to that gory dish that readers are called to sate their hunger for information.

Bon appetite.