Feature
I am in a profession in which I claim to be free. I have the prerogative, privilege or even the right to point a corrective finger at society and at persons or at situations that are incompatible with the general good.
I am free to be the pace-setter, to stand as a watch dog, the gate- keeper of society. I am looked upon as one who can move mountains. I can make society tremble with what I say and what I do. I am free to be who I am and none can stand on my way because the law of the land gives me that propensity to be the land’s gate keeper: I can open doors and I can close them I can make people rise and I can make them fall with what I say or write. I have a right to pry into those areas where the ordinary person cannot get into just anyhow .In fact I have a license because of my profession to meet people the ordinary person no matter who he is cannot easily approach. I am free.
Sometimes I wonder however whether in my freedom I can just say or do anything without control. Are there any consequences when I expose things that are in exposable? Do I have the freedom to get into someone’s bed room to tell the world how a couple makes love? Or, in my freedom can I tell on anything? Do I despise someone else’s dignity because I am free to say it as it is? Before I exercise my freedom even to criticize or report on an incident or event, do I examine the consequences of my action or revelation?
Does my freedom make me a nuisance? Does it make me irresponsible? How do I consider myself in the midst of what I do? Do I regulate what I say or write? Do I have feelings for other people’s integrity or decent lives as I would have for myself if someone else were to do the same? In my freedom as a professional squiller, do I recognize what damage I can cause a society or persons if I am not careful? Could my freedom run me mad?
As I looked at the word freedom and how I know in the practice of the profession of journalism, I am free because one of the appropriations of the law is freedom of speech, I ask myself whether I have not been abusive or injurious while doing what I do sometimes. I’d like to put myself in the pool of those, who like me are in this profession and find out whether in the exercise of our duties, we have not given freedom a different connotation.
When I read Headlines on the front pages of the majority of our newspapers, remember there are nearly six hundred tabloids that are in operation in this country, or I listen to some debates, on some radio or television stations, I ask myself whether we or I have not given freedom a different undertone? How free am I? The role I have as a professional in this milieu is to inform my public correctly with facts.
There should be no nuances. I must be sure of what I say and not base anything i say or write on hear-say or rumor .But I am caught in the middle of many who practice in this profession who think freedom means getting into the gutters and exhuming decayed car eases to pollute the atmospheric. Is that the kind of freedom I want to be part of? Difficult to say because I too as a journalist, I am regarded as a riff-raff. I am seen as one of those untamed nonentities who claim because they are free, they must go bunkers or even mad. They have no respect for themselves so how can they have respect for others?
There is no democracy without a free press. But how free can that press be? Should it be one that ridicules its society and those who head that society? Have we forgotten that when we ridicule our society we do so of ourselves?
From experience I know it is difficult to criticize than to correct. We easily find faults than solutions. So we go any-which-way to excessively criticize, oblivious of the fact that such criticism can be destructive not productive. But what I notice in my profession is that our freedom to criticize or put society on the alert, has remained a powerful temptation to be derogatory and most of all indecent. We have lost our sense of dignity, decency and fair play. We have become like common curs or hooligans in a profession of nobility.
My heart goes for this profession in which I find myself. How can I as an individual correct the wrongs we have done to ourselves? When shall we stop taking a bottle of beer to blackmail or denigrate someone else? And how would you feel if you are the one being calumnized?
You don’t care, right? Don’t worry _what goes around comes around.
Negativity is highly contagious. We give it to others and one day they will give it back to us. The cycle my friend can only be broken by positive thoughts, heartful prayers and encouraging words.
Freedom should be looked at from a positive perspective. Only the thief is capable of identifying places where theft has taken place.
As for me and the profession I practice, I will like to be critical but not destructive, to be positive and not negative. And that’s the mettle of journalism. And that’s the reason why I am in it and would like to see lovers of this profession take a positive step to uphold its nobility.
