Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, on Tuesday, tasked media executives to always put national unity and security above personal considerations in line with established ethics and ethos of news reportage.
Speaking at the National Media Conference organized by the Nigeria Union of Journalists with the theme: “The Media and National Unity” held at the Obasanjo Presidential Library, Oke- Mosan, Abeokuta, the Governor said the media executives have a responsibility to ensure fair reportage based on best tradition of investigative journalism and objectivity.
Mr. Ambode, who was represented by Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Mr. Tunji Bello, also enjoined the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) as the umbrella body of all practicing journalists, to champion the cause of ensuring that crime and criminality which constitutes infractions against humanity are reported without prejudice to any ethnic group or religious belief.
While imploring journalists to speak against crime and report it fairly and objectively, the Governor maintained “we must speak against crime and report it fairly and objectively without playing to the sentiments that tend to threaten our fragile national unity”.
“Let us stop giving ethnic or religious coloration to criminal acts, because by so doing, we will be inadvertently promoting ethnic/religious disaffection and by extension national disintegration”, he added.
He reiterated that the media, as the Fourth Estate of the Realm, holds a very strategic position in the crucial task of achieving national bonding, cohesion and unity of the various diverse ethnic nationalities in Nigeria.
The Governor said that their duties should therefore be seen as a task that must be discharged with great sense of responsibility and patriotism, while commending the Union for staying the course of national unity through the discourse.
