Prof. Lukman Azeez, the Dean-elect of the Faculty of Communication and Information Sciences, University of Ilorin (Unilorin), has called for the regulation of digital space to ensure that only trained and certified journalists are in charge of information dissemination to the public. Azeez, who made this appeal on Thursday in an interview with newsmen at […]
Prof. Lukman Azeez, the Dean-elect of the Faculty of Communication and Information Sciences, University of Ilorin (Unilorin), has called for the regulation of digital space to ensure that only trained and certified journalists are in charge of information dissemination to the public.
Azeez, who made this appeal on Thursday in an interview with newsmen at the university, lamented that digital revolution has turned everybody into amateur journalists.
“So you don’t need to train to practice journalism. You can sit in the corridor of your room now and dish out information to the public without knowing the rudiments of journalism practice.
“We can no longer identify trained journalists from the pack of all that call themselves journalists. In essence, journalism has been bastardised,” he said.
Azeez lamented that quacks have taken over journalism practice and they are occupying the space with dangerous rumours and misinformation.
“The agenda setting role of journalists, which used to be exclusive to them, has now been taken over by the citizen journalists.
“Unfortunately, the trained journalists themselves are now dancing to the tunes set by citizen journalism.
“Broadcast and print journalists now rush at reposting what they obtain from citizen journalism,” he said.
Azeez, who is the first Professor of Mass Communication at Unilorin, added that eyewitness reports introduced by media outlets have been abused.
According to him, in the name of eyewitness accounts, journalism has turned into quack practice where anybody with smart phone can report to the public, observing that journalism has been degraded and denigrated.
Azeez, however, admitted that it was impossible to scrap citizen journalism as ”it is an inevitable phenomenon of our digital age”.
While advising that the digital space be regulated, the don stressed the need to reinforce ”the relevance of good traditional practice so that real and authentic journalists can ignore citizen journalism.
”Bloggers, to some scholars, are considered as citizen journalists. But it is difficult to draw a line because some bloggers are trained journalists.
“To this end, we cannot throw away the bath water with the baby”, he added.
Azeez therefore advised that ”the ideal is to force every practitioner to be certified.
“That is also the way of minimising the practice of citizen journalism”.
