Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi, on Friday, has said a free and vibrant press possesses powers more potent than all the arms of government combined, thus must be careful in exercising its mandate.

”A truly free and vibrant press is more powerful than the three traditional arms of government combined.

”In fact, the world would be a scary and dark place without the mavens who collect, curate and communicate information in a timely and responsible manner.

”In so doing, they dispel falsehood, eliminate dangerous assumptions and provide societies with the basic premise upon which governance and other decisions can be made,” Bello said at the opening session of the 29th edition of the Nigerian Media Merit Award (NMMA), at Government House, Lokoja.

The governor noted that modern society cannot do without journalists as they were helping to bring order to society and engender human cooperation.

He, however, noted that lives and whole societies had been ruined by the irresponsible practice of journalism by some media practitioners, or quacks who impersonated them.

The governor stressed that the use of the tools of the journalists’ trade to deal in hate speech had set off many on fire which ultimately consumed whole polities and their people.

“Fake news is ubiquitous nowadays, whether it is rumour-mongering, dangerous innuendos, character assassination or other forms of inaccurate reportage.

“The problem is so endemic that in Q3 2020 alone, statistics showed that there were 1.8 billion engagements with fake news on Facebook alone! Nigeria, like many countries, has fallen victim to it many times, sometimes with devastating loss of lives or properties.

“The Press is, therefore, one of the inescapable hallmarks of modern society and in particular, the custodians of public perception. What a divine responsibility!

“However, the Press is useful only to the extent that it functions within the ambit of verity and veracity and in line with demands of propriety. It must regulate itself with the help of the Law to avoid malfunctioning,” he said.

Bello stressed that practitioners must recognise that as a result of the incredible powers which society had entrusted to them, there should be a corresponding exhibition of responsibility, ethics and professionalism in the exercise of those powers by journalists.

He added: “Necessity is, therefore, laid on the real journalists to stand up and be counted when it comes to taking back their profession from the quacks and the hacks, specifically the myriad of unregulated persons armed with Internet-enabled devices who haunt the media space, especially social media.

“These malicious persons wreck lives and reputations by the millions simply because someone paid them, or because they have real or imagined grouse against an individual or institution. Worse, they proceed without a care in the world because no one regulates them.”

He, therefore, enjoined the NMMA as the most important institution to reward merit in the way individuals and media houses practice journalism, while providing critical motivation for the real journalists to do their work professionally.

“In this way, the NMMA will help to promote sanity in the industry and simultaneously function as an accountability partner for most professional journalists,” the governor said.

Bello’s political party, the All Progressives Congress, has been pushing for regulation of the Nigerian media over accusations of fake news and threats to national security.

Nonetheless, government officials, including Information Minister, Lai Mohammed, and Bello, have themselves been caught dishing untruths on national and public interest issues.

NAN