POWER OF MASS MEDIA: THANK YOU, IPF!, BY TOBOUKE JEMINE

The earth-long relevance of the media as a vehicle of information, enlightenment, advertisement , entertainment, education, propaganda, and much more cannot be overemphasized.He who low-rates the power of the news media does so at his or her own peril. He who utilizes it will have his works and words crested on the walls of the sun. It is significant to every section of the society . It is useful to both the good and the bad.

“Were it left to me to decide if we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

— Thomas Jefferson

It is a two-edged sword. It can build and it can destroy. It plants and it uproots. It can lift up and it can bring down. It informs and deforms. It enlightens and it ‘darkens’. It communicates truth and circulate rumours as well. It can make a messiah out of a Joseph Stalin, and a goblin out of a Michael Jackson. It made a dynamite-genuis like Alfred Nobel to invent the Nobel Prize. It elevated a flesh-and-blood being like Madiba to the heights of demi-gods.

I’m yet to come by any great event that has ever taken place on earth without the participation of the technologies of information and persuasion. Politicians, liberation fighters, unionists,clerics, sports personalities and entertainers all make use of the media to propagate their activities. Every oppressed and marginalized society needs the mass media to make a difference and effect positive changes. Our voices of agony will not be heard if we ignore the influence of the mass media.

The media is an indispensable tool. The media man is like a blacksmith; he can give a true or false shape to news, he can bend justice or straighten injustice with his news tools. He is like a foundry worker — at his disposal are foundry instrument to invent events in the way he likes. But True Journalism is one of the fundamental factors that our society needs to survive and triumph over the forces of retrogression. It is called the Fourth Estate of the Realm for a reason.

I’m moved to write this piece as my own little way of appreciating the leadership of the Ijaw Publishers Forum (IPF) for keeping to its mandate. Again and again,it has been demonstrating media activism impressively. We have seen how it has been putting the Ijaw Story right ever since it was inaugurated early this month. It came up against Vanguard Newspaper for giving Ijaw Nation libel over the Okuama Incidence; it visited Pa Clark’s house at Kiagbodo to see the level of damage done to the honour of the ninogenarian by the military, and many other strides it has been making to promote the Ijaw Cause are worth applauding.

Kudos IPF. Your fire will never fizzle out🙏

By Tobouke JEMINE

©31/03/2024