President Boko spoke as though he was doing the media a favour, almost like a stern father warning wayward children, insisting he was “helping them” avoid imprisonment for defamation by admonishing them early. It is an odd kind of help. The sort that pulls out a whip and calls it a hug. The danger is not the criticism. Journalists are criticised all the time. They should. However, the danger lies in repeating the claim that “journalists write lies” as if repetition alone can transform an accusation into evidence. As the saying goes, repeating a lie many times does not make it true. And repeating a generalisation many times does not make it accurate. If the President or anyone, for that matter, believes that certain journalists or certain media houses have peddled falsehoods, the remedy is simple.
Point to the story, show where the error lies, name the newsroom, and demand accountability. Journalism thrives on scrutiny. But scrutiny that refuses to identify the object of its complaint becomes something else, a weapon, not a corrective tool. Listening to the President reminded those steeped in the profession that if you want to correct a journalist, you bring them the article. If you want to intimidate them, you bring them the “atmosphere.” On Tuesday, we were given the atmosphere. Thus, anyone who has ever worked inside a newsroom knows that mistakes happen. You double-check a figure and still get it wrong. You interview someone in a noisy environment and mishear a name. You type in a rush and your grammar stumbles. When these things happen, responsible journalists apologise and correct the record, which has happened in our media. That is not lying. That is human fallibility. To lie is deliberate, malicious, and calculated. To make an error is to be imperfect. Collapsing these two things into one moral category is not only intellectually dishonest, it is also dangerous.
