Cover Story: Certificated Quackery; Case Study of The Punch Newspaper as Merchant of Falsehoods

Story by Toyo C. Ngem, Biola Aina & Eniola David

AT the 2019 Biennial Convention of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) held on Saturday, May 4, at Airport Hotel, Ikeja, the thrust of the eminent speakers' address was yet a repeat of the charge to the media to embrace the highest standard of professionalism required of the industry. In the context of that, the Vice-president, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, advised the practitioners to weed out quacks from the industry in order to maintain the sanctity of the profession of journalism.

He expressed the distraught of government over the practice direction of what he called “the new media” he by himself revealed to be referring to online journalism that strives to compete on the race speed of first-to-break-the-news. He believed this habit was badly eroding the convention of fact-checking upon which the core value of journalism rests. “What we see today is that instant reporting is making mincemeat of the virtues of cross-checking facts before publishing”, he said.

Vice President of Nigeria, Professor Yemi Osinbajo

With that galaxy of regulators of official information into the airspace of Nigeria, the occasion was no doubt a reflection of the broad spectrum of the media practitioners. The Vice-president therefore believed he had the right audience to charge with the responsibility of checking the trending dangerous absurdity in the industry.

He said: “Since the role of editors is quality control and gate keeping, of things they must do is to manage the new media (online/social media) and place some form of control. Some people must take the lead to speak up against the bastardisation of the new media as it is gradually relegating investigative journalism”.

Really, professor Osinbajo's elocution on this rot in media practice appeared to be limitedly located to the online platform where he believed the 'quacks' existed in “mushroom” multitudes of viral cankerworms that are rather destroying the collective integrity value of the general media across board to the terrestrial orthodox platform too. “The editors must now take over the online media as seriously as they did to the traditional media and that move has to be unprecedented”, Osinbajo said.

It was not known by what barometric data the Vice-president concluded the den of prevailing media ethical rots to be the online platform alone. Or to make it more aggressively sensible, this magazine believes he had passed the wrong message to the right audience. More in the words of Brian Browne, the Vice-president simply seemed to 'ignore the viper at his heels to nurse the fear of a tiger yet at great distance'.

Less than two months after, the Vice-president was to become the next first person to suffer his neglect of the many editors of conventional 'old' media in that audience as the real certificated quacks he had besieged for a solution to the entrenched unprofessional and ethically debased media industry in Nigeria. The Punch newspaper's fangs of venomous editorial quackery just struck him hard near his jugular vein.

On Saturday, July 13, the newspaper published a story on a seeming corrupt suspicion about Vice-president Osinbajo. But whatever the significance of that publication was to The Punch, it simply came forth to the discernible minds as a good case study beholding a poser that justifiably queries the education pedigree of the ubiquitous certificated quacks holding forth the trust of people in the Fourth Estate of the Realm.

Entitled “Osinbajo's firm linked to company fingered in Alpha Beta scam” as the headline of that Saturday edition, The Punch newspaper accused the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) of a deliberate plot to bury a petition written by one Dapo Apara against a firm, Alpha Beta, with allegation of tax evasion and a N100billion money laundering scam. However, the newspaper story by primary intent held that the EFCC's deliberate negligence and dereliction of duty over the petition was the handwork of Vice-president Osinbajo, who, as implied, was using his office to stall the investigation because he had an official relationship with the company, Ocean Trust Limited, through which the Alpha Beta laundered the N100billion. The newspaper strived to justify this claim by positing that a legal firm, Simmonscooper Partners, in which the Vice-president 'is' a co-founder was the “Company Secretary” – call it legal unit if you like – to the Ocean Trust Limited.

But going by the series of rejoinders that would later trail the story from both the EFCC and other corporate organisations felt derided by the report, the publication soon rather exposed The Punch newspaper as much a big player in the mischievous use of the print media for character assassination and purveyor of fake news via both the Osinbajo's “New Media” – online platform – and the 'old' print-media platform. It is however noteworthy to state that the pang of collateral damage on the EFCC from The Punch's fang-bite on Osinbajo made the privilege for the reading public to see how the major media editors do manipulate their psyches with false information and fake news – of course at pecuniary interest that put their (media) services in treachery against the public interests.

EFCC Acting Chairman, Ibrahim Magu

Reacting to the publication, the EFCC exposed how The Punch played a trick of pretentious fact-checking on the Commission, but the EFCC was too alert and smart to beat the media firm to the game. Speaking through its Acting Head, Media and Publicity, Mr. Tony Orilade, the EFCC explained what it described as “unprofessional” conduct of “The Punch newspaper to champion such misinformation”.

Orilade said: “To underscore the desperation of the editorial team that anchored the report, Mr. Tobi Aworinde, contacted the Commission's acting spokesperson at exactly 9.44pm on Friday, July 12, 2019 on the subject matter. He (Mr. Aworinde) called the spokesperson to know the position of the Commission on the petition (against Alpha Beta and Ocean Trust Ltd). The spokesperson sent a response via a WhatsApp platform (instantly). Unfortunately, this response was not captured in The Punch report.

“When contacted for (why) the response of the spokesperson was not reflected in the report, Mr. Aworinde replied and said: 'I forwarded the message as soon as I got it. It must have been the race to press. We were behind on our production deadline when I called for the reaction. My apologies, Sir'”.

But with this reply, the Commission was convinced that the newspaper published its story with ulterior motive. “There is no doubt that 'the race to press' and 'we were behind our production deadline…' as explained by Aworinde (the reporter) is suggestive that there was an agenda and a motive”, Orilade concluded.

Not to leave any stone unturned in the same breath of the rejoinder, the EFCC went further to explain the true position of the Dapo Apara's petition as given to The Punch thus: “It is erroneous for the newspaper to claim that the Commission did not do anything in respect to the petition for one year… While not denying the fact that such petition was received on Alpha Beta by the Commission last year July, preliminary investigation has shown that the petitioner did not substantiate the allegation contained in his petition... If the petitioner has any further proof with regards to the petition, our doors are wide open. As a tradition, we do not deal on hearsays. We act on facts and raw data. The Commission will not allow anybody to drag its name into the mud for ill-motive reasons”.

Also enraged by The Punch's story was the Simmonscooper Partners, the firm through which the newspaper linked the Vice-president to the petition. Describing the publication as “defamation” of its corporate goodwill and reputation, the firm came forth to establish the proof of mischief as intended by the story. In an advertorial published in The Nation of July 18, Simmoncooper Partners observed that the proof of malicious falsehoods contents of The Punch’s story began with the wrong corporate address quoted for it.

“For the avoidance of doubt”, the firm said, “Simmoncooper Partners has never retained a physical address at 'B5, Falomo Shopping Complex, Southwest, Ikoyi, Victorial Island... “A cursory inquiry by Punch could have shown that this address is neither the firm's registered address nor its principal office”.

The firm then went further to “categorically states that it has never been retained by Ocean Trust Limited for secretarial services as alleged by The Punch newspaper or at all… (And that) Ocean Trust Limited has a subsisting Company Secretary that had been appointed since 2011, which fact was curiously left out by The Punch in the publication”. It then queried how the common sense of a supposed editorial team of the like of Punch newspaper would have to think and impute a motive that a lawyer holding brief for a criminal suspect is also deemed to be a suspect for the crime. It queried seemingly that even if Simmoncooper Partners were to be the Company Secretary for Ocean Trust Limited, “the imputation that offering a professional services to a company by itself created an association with alleged wrongdoing is neither customary nor reasonable… Offering professional services cannot be characterised as wrongdoing”.

And based on this establishment of the ill-motive reasons, the firm held that the publication was a direct assault of character assassination on its founders and the entire staff. Accordingly, the firm threatened to sue The Punch if it failed to retract the story with apologies.

It said: “The publication seems designed to damage the reputation of Simmonscooper Partners and its past and current members rather than have any comment basis… The firm is (therefore) aggrieved by the wanton mischievous and unprofessional manner in which The Punch has published the defamatory statements in the publication. Simmoncooper Partners intends to seek redress to the fullest extent available in law”.

Generally, followers of events in the media sector would not fail to notice the gradual departure of The Punch newspapers from its past glory of a trusted media for cross-checking of news dished out by the uncompetitive government’s media. Indeed, the debate engaging the public space about peoples' distrust for the media is really a historical issue from time past. It was a subject that contributed largely to the demise of government owned media houses and consequentially informed the direct correlative thriving evolution of the private owned print and electronic media.

This is evident from the direct history of the death of Daily Times newspapers from the military government's meddlesomeness, which came to the public knowledge that Nigerians were not being truly informed about matters of governance. That dominant media, at least in the Southern part of Nigeria, and as then a leg of government's institution, became perceived as purveyor of falsehoods, informing a direct decline in its fortune. This impression opened a wide space for the private sector media to emerge with The Guardian newspaper evolving as the pioneer.

Private Print Media

As this private media appeared to be the place where the public trust had shifted, the like of 'star journalist from The Daily Times like Stanley Macebuh, Patrick Dele Cole, Lade Bonuola, Femi Kusa, Amma Ogan and others went on to become the pioneer staff of The Guardian' to sustain the trust desired by the public and maintain the “continuity of the intellectual character of journalism as it evolved over the years”.

Although while The Tribune would have counted more as the pioneer of the private sector print media, the political pedigree of the founder, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, could not help to give it a distinguished status of apoliticism which Felix Ibru brought to bear as a publisher of The Guardian.

Again, it may be needful to connect the role of Nigerian public in the eventual race for leadership struggle among the private sector print media that eventually emerged.

While the government began to grow its intolerance of The Guardian and the newspaper began to suffer incessant assaults of military siege, The Punch and National Concord newspapers began to find opportunity to leverage upon as newspapers of the masses with cover price that turned The Guardian to be a newspaper of the elite and intellectuals in the perspective of Nigerians. But the publisher of National Concord, Chief MKO Abiola’s political pedigree as stalwart of National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the Second Republic and his failure to de-align his newspaper’s publishing philosophy from his personal political interest caused the paper to be tagged a private arm of the ruling NPN government’s media. With that, The Punch gained the edge over others that included The Vanguard, The Sketch (a Southwest governments’ media) and The Tribune. The Champion newspaper that entered the market and thrived on the strength of Igbo ethnic sympathy soon died in the face of strict competition with The Sun that later came on the same cultural philosophy with it.

With agitation to end military rule in Nigeria, the public trust in the private media was deepened. The media space was now completely dominated by the private sector through a correlative growth that was directly proportional to the progressive death of the governments’ owned media. This caused its (private media’s) expansion with evolution of investigative journalism holding forth as a new branch of the print-media and came as weekly magazines. The expanded consequential effect of that was also the opening up of the broadcasting sector of the media to the private sector too. The African Independent Television (AIT) and Ray Power FM Radio Station became the pioneer and early leaders of the industry.

So obvious was the trust of Nigerian public in the private sector media that even the late General Sanni Abacha allegedly felt it was better for him to hijack AIT from the founder, Dr. Raymond Dokpesi, for his agenda of transforming from military Head of State to civilian President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. Dokpesi once alleged that Abacha offered to buy the broadcasting station for N1billion.

With exit of the military from the political sphere, the will of incisive and ethical journalism that earned the private media its public trust became heavily challenged, particularly effective with the infamous attempt of President Olusegun Obasanjo's 'Third Term Agenda'. The schism in the landscape of the private media along political linings became well discernible.

            Consequently, again, the public trust in the private media began to progressively decline too. Wholesomely, therefore, in both the government and private media sector’s, the absurdity of democratic rule in 20years thus far has rather thrown up misfits in places of essential public interests that journalism is constitutionally empowered to serve in part. In other words, the rots in the politicians' caves have virulently infected the systemic space of the media such that journalism has become the artillery of assaults by chicaneries against systemic merits that ought to be feasible in terms of public education, knowledge building, informed society and socialisation of virtues being championed by the media as cause in setting social agenda.

INFORMED by this anathema, way back in 2011, Professor Ayo Olukotun raised a poser that could fit into his prescience of today's further decline of journalism deeper into the abyss of practical impunity with certificated quackery. He asked: “What then is the future of educational role of the media and the tradition of public intellectual?”

In his attempt to answer this question, he revealed the mindset that informed the question. He said: “Like most things in Nigeria, decline and devaluation have set in to the extent that although many journalists now parade several academic degrees, they probably are not informative or as readable as was the case a decade or so ago”(The Nation, 22/12/11p21).

This opinion is not too distinct from observations held in recent time in some quarters. One school of thought here ascribes the media defect of declining ethical journalism to dearth of well-grounded educated practitioners lined up for succession planning in the editorial leadership of the print media houses. Another school of thought, who particularly points to the declining media ethical value of The Punch however holds that this bad fate of the newspaper is indicative of its share of the systemic rots of the crass craze for materialism and self-economic prosperity above the public interests for which the media acquires its constitutional powers of independence from the government. It's a bug believed to have been caught from this 20years of the Forth Republic that invoked it in all spheres of our lives and across all age-class that make the current era of youth between 0-35years age bracket the worse for it.       

A part of Civics Journal investigation results that found these schools' reasoning quite valid could as well be located in many of The Punch's unexciting and misinforming editorials. Of particular interest among them was that of the edition of Tuesday, November 20, 2012. It was the newspaper's contributing opinion to the raging but “unreasonable” allegation of plots by then Governor Rauf Aregbe to Islamise Osun State. The editorial in question was about the Governor's proclamation of public holiday for the observation of Hijra – Islamic New Year.

Curiously, it turned out that the newspaper’s Editorial Board simply strayed into a strange terrain with a residual knowledge of the subject it was offering its opinion. This in effect should literally suffice for description as arm-chair journalism. It took a rejoinder from Femi Abbas of The Nation to expose the anchor editors as “the harebrained lots”.

But the newspaper had never looked back for a self-reflection on its straying to the abyss of junk media. Rather its publications have continued to grow in bounds and leap in merchandise of falsehoods and wallow in trade of misinformation to innocent Nigerians.

One of its most recent works of deliberate misinformation with the language of photo-ups was the edition of Monday, June 24, 2019. The front page was splashed with photos of some bad roads for which it alleged the Federal Ministry of Works, Power and Housing had received a total sum of N757.48billion but yet remained dilapidated. The insinuated corruption suspicion story came at the time this magazine was gathering materials for this cover story, which was informed by imperative investigation of the culpability of the major media houses in the progressive drive of Nigerian state into a misinformed society.

The Punch was at the time being understudied among the prime suspects from the outcry in some quarters that “the newspaper was becoming a merchant of falsehoods, raking in millions of naira from selling false information. This magazine decided to cross-check the data with the concerned Ministry. The Punch did not disappoint in living up to this absurd impression about it. It had just published another falsehood with manipulated information reportage!!

From the verified fact with the Ministry, it was evidently revealed that it was a total sum of N521.919billion it received as cash-backing for road projects within the four-year period specified by The Punch report. This was against the total sum of N890billion that was the actual budgetary appropriation for the combined three years of 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Besides, as ethical fact-checking would have revealed to the media firm, some of the roads listed by it were Trunk-B (state owned) roads like the Zamfara's Gusau-Dansadu Road and the Osun's Ejigbo-Iwo Road. Likewise, it is an open knowledge that the Lagos-Badagry Road as yet ongoing with dualisation expansion is a Lagos State project over which the newspaper had among others reported the new Governor Sanwo-olu's comments on the state of actions over it.

Also, many of the listed roads, yet being Trunk-A though, were not in any way captured in the years' budget for the period much less receiving any money for them as erroneously reported by The Punch.

While Civics Journal could not ascertain if its prompt enquiry informed it, but it worth mentioning here that the story also provoked an official reaction by the Ministry of Works, Power and Housing (as then was) by way of published rejoinder wherein comprehensive clarifications were made to establish the falsehoods of the story. And in the light of that, the Ministry advised in caveat that “media organisations should therefore endeavour to cross-check their information so as not to misinform the general public” (The Nation, 03/07/19p30).

Followers of this new cultural order of The Punch's publication style are wondering if deliberate twist of facts in reportage of events was an innovation being thrown up for a unique selling point in its competitive race to a leadership position in the print media. This observation yet came against the backdrop of how the newspaper uniquely reported the events of formal inauguration of the new Cabinet ministers by President Muhammodu Buhari for his second governance tenure on August 21, 2019.

In a rider to the lead caption, it published that Buhari had barred the ministers from having direct access to him and reported that the President said they could only see him through his Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari. That the story as reported by The Punch had a deeper meaning that was “tendentiously mischievous” should bespeak to the reasons for the reactions both from the Presidency and some open-minded individuals.

From the Presidency came, as should ordinarily be expected, the clarification of the roles of Chief of Staff and that of the Secretary to the Government of Federation (SGF). The President's Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, said the explanation became necessary in view of the ambiguous impression created in a “recent media reports and (as enhanced in viral spread by) social  media reports” about a purported orientation statement made to the new cabinet members by the President. He emphasised that the duo's roles yet remained the same as a universal model it had ever being under the Presidential System of Government as Nigeria adopted it from the United State of America (USA).

He explained it in context: “In the traditional Presidential System, it is the primary function of a Chief of Staff… to supervise the key State House staff, control access to the office and person of the President, manage communications and information flow and this includes that which binds the relationship with the two other arms of government…When President Buhari explained to the ministers that they would be expected to communicate with him and arrange scheduling to meet with him primarily via the Chief of Staff, he did so as many of the Buhari II (2nd Term) Cabinet ministerial appointment are new appointments and cannot therefore be expected to know how matters of liaisons with the President operates”.

Distinguishing this yet from the roles of the Secretary to the Government of Federation, Shehu stated further: “SGF on the other hand is responsible for ensuring the effective coordination and monitoring of the implementation of government policies and programmes. All cabinet matters must go through him”.

Generally, while it amounts to editorial's creative ingenuity for a media house to set agenda for the government, it is yet a condemnable ill-motive for the media to mischievously generate a controversy out of existing fact of common sense knowledge or common place unharmful universal order as thrown up by The Punch in its referenced story above.

As some observers noted, a newspaper of its standing reputation with correspondents covering the beat of governance from the inner workings of State Houses at both the states and Presidency could only be artfully deceptive to claim ignorance that informed such story that deliberately twisted the President's advisory statement to his new cabinet members. It is a common knowledge in the media industry that a functional media house that worth the primary value of a social and informal educational institution cannot operate effectively with a culture of arm-chair journalism. A newspaper is worth its social relevance only in so far its publications are unquestionably reliable.

Besides, some veteran journalists and media pundits consulted for incisive contributions to this cover story hold that The Punch could not be helping itself by making it a deliberate cultural habit to continue publications of stories that attract rejoinders. “It is only digging its own grave when the reading public begins to see it as practitioner of arm-chair journalism”, a communication experts noted.

Another academia claimed to have written off the newspaper as purveyor of fake news that is yet operating only on the lifeline survival of its past glory. He said: “It should therefore be regrettable to the contemporary management of The Punch that the newspaper that rose to leadership of the print media in Nigeria through public trust in its publications would regress so appreciably to becoming the champion of misinformation with mint of falsehoods”

Actions are underscored by motives. Readers are therefore wont to tendentiously ask this about reasons for the emerging unwholesome practices of The Punch. In conscious answers to it, communication pundits and political analysts were unanimous in opinion that the newspaper may have taken a cause for pecuniary interest of economic and trade value of pen power in the convention of politicians' warfare in struggle for powers.

This opinion would seem justifiable from the curious coincidences of personages of the Lagos progressives' politicians making up victims of the established ill-motive unethical reportage of the newspaper thus far. For instance, the corruption suspicion story about the Ministry of Works, Power and Housing that covered the four-year period of Babatunde Raji Fashola as the substantive Minister and political head of the Ministry of Works would hardly be devoid of a motive to deceptively question the integrity of the man, particular given the obvious deliberate misinformation established as the mischievous content of the story.

With reference to The Punch's Publication of Simmoncooper and Partners story, The Nation newspaper published that it was a war of politicians’ struggle for power in 2023 that was starting earnestly.

With a front page bold caption that reads “2023: Osinbanjo, Tinubu face smear campaign”, The Nation's story would seem to imply that The Punch was rather a pen power of a group of politicians pushing an aggressive assault of character assassination against the person of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the National Leader of the ruling party, All Progressives Congress (APC).

The Nation claimed to have gathered in its investigations that “an agenda for a prolonged smear campaign has been put in place beginning with the printing of posters in Dubai by a Kaduna-based politician against Tinubu. It went further to describe the campaign in quoted words of its sources as “the war that has now assumed a media assault dimension will spread for two year… (in) a mission to prevent southward shift of the Presidential powers in 2023”.

This submission of The Nation nevertheless finds many points of concurrence with the independent investigation of this magazine. Indeed, a source in the Civics Journal's described this purported anti-Tinubu campaign as “Mission to kill It” with ‘MKI’ as the code name.