How we write about ourselves.

I promise you I decided to write this post before the recent tragic events at the College of Agriculture, Gujba in Yobe State.

Two things I have said often on this blog.

(a) The Fourth Republic is probably the single most corrupt period of our history so far; and

(b) The Fourth Republic is the second-most violent period in our recent history, behind only the Civil War. The First Republic would be third on the list of violent periods, despite the fact that many seem to look at it as though it were some sort of golden age of peace and prosperity.

There is enough violence going on that I would probably have had to apologize regardless of when I eventually wrote the post. But for the record, I was going to write this before what happened in Yobe.

But firstly, may the souls of the victims Rest in Peace. I don't know what else to say. There is nothing I can do to help.

I wanted to write a post about the way our media covers murder and mass murder, specifically the tendency to show graphic pictures of the victims.

Elsewhere in the world, they spare the families of the deceased the shocking sight of their loved ones in the aftermath of something like this .... whereas in Nigeria, the victims' bodies are displayed without blurring, censoring or respectfully-placed pixels.

By the way, those media outlets from elsewhere in the world do not extend that level of respect to us when covering incidents of mass violence on our continent. For example, some years ago, on a weekend morning (i.e. when children were likely to be home), one of the USA's basic cable networks ran a documentary on Liberia and Sierra Leone, and showed everything, including one man's head which had been detached from his body and placed on a table. Had he been an American victim of a crime in the USA, either (a) they wouldn't have shown the head; or (b) they would have blurred his eyes so we the viewers (and particularly his family) would not .... see him. In fact, I think their channels are afraid of being sued by the families of American victims, but fear no consequence from us.

Still, how can we demand respect from other people when we do not respect ourselves? Reminds me of a speech I gave on Nigeria, where I instructed the audience to stop referring to Africa's (ethnic) nations as "tribes". After talking about this, that and the other, I took my seat and prepared to listen to the Kenyan who was due to speak next about Kenya. To my dismay, he spent the entire time referring to every single ethnic group in Kenya, one after the other, as a "tribe". It was a small enough group that I could see the people in the audience looking at each other in confusion.

By the way, I am not squeamish and this post is not about squeamishness. There is a time and place to look at and see the ugly realities of human history, of the human present and (unfortunately) of the human future. In the time and the place, I do not turn away.

That isn't what our media is doing, though. In fact, as you know, I am generally critical of how our media cover mass murders and single-victim murders.  Their coverage of "communal violence" does very little to give us factual information about what actually happened, why it happened, and who actually did it.  Their coverage of "communal violence" on the contrary tends to serve a fuel-on-the-fire role of sustaining the exact sort of cloud of misinformation that makes "communal violence" both likely and recurrent.

There are analysts and commentators who talk about something called "disaster porn". I wish they had chosen a different name for it (and shudder to think that some people will stumble onto this page after doing a web-search for something else).  You can do a web-search yourself to find essays on "disaster porn" ... and when you've done that, consider that I think what the Nigerian media does is 100% "disaster porn" and 0% information.

More importantly they show 0% sensitivity in not even considering the fact that someone's mother, or father or spouse or child might opt to find out what happened in the world today, and find themselves looking unexpectedly at the graphic image of their murdered relative. You tend to hear police in certain countries talk about not revealing the names of the victims to the media until after their families have been informed -- in Nigeria, particularly now in the era of the internet, the pictures of the dead are posted even before the police know how many dead people there are, much less the names of family members to notify.

Do we even notify the families?  A friend of mine, my next-door neighbour growing up, was murdered on the campus of one of our universities back when "cult violence" was rampant. His body was unceremoniously dumped with a pile of other bodies collected that night, and his parents had no idea what had happened because no one (not the police, not the university, no one at all) told them anything. After they hadn't heard from him in a long while, they travelled to the university, presuming to ask him what was going on .... only to be directed to the morgue, where they found him in a pile of other bodies.

That particular incident didn't make the news, because it was didn't met the threshold to count as good "disaster porn".  There is a lot of stuff, violent stuff that happens in our Federal Republic that no one ever hears about, because there isn't an "angle" to it, no existing strings the news can be used to pull.

But that isn't really what this post is about.

There is a time and place for graphic images of violence and disaster. And there is a time and place when images can be presented, but should be "censored" to show sensitivity to the families of the victims.

There is also a philosophical principle involved in sensitizing people to something by showing them what it is without editing. But there is also a dangerous result where people see something so often they become inured to it (indeed, seeing incredibly graphic images of mass murder does not seem to lead to protests or outrage about the media showing us such images; on the contrary, we don't seem to react to it at all).

I wish someone would speak to the Nigerian media, and explain to them the difference. Unlike our politicians, I think the media is capable of learning.

May the souls of the victims Rest in Peace.