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Opinion

Journalism, PR, and Cash for Coverage: Matters Arising

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By Dr. Marcel Mbamalu

 

 

SIMPLE CONTEXTUAL DEFINITIONS

 

Who is a Journalist?

For the purpose of this discussion, a journalist can be described as a  person who collects, writes, photographs, processes, edits, or comments on news or other topical information to the public.

 

A Journalist’s work is called journalism (Wikipedia). A journalist must, in line with professional ethics, be accurate and fair. The journalist seeks Truth and reports it. He must be honest and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information…and should take responsibility for the accuracy of his work (SPJ Code of Ethics, revised September 6, 2014)

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Public Relations/ Practitioner

 

The professional maintenance of a favorable public image by a company, organization, or a famous person. The PR profession ensures a company, or organization or famous person maintains good records in the public eye. The PR practitioner helps people, organizations to gain public acceptance by explaining the aims, objectives, and methods of their organization and by building and maintaining a favorable image     (https://gostudy.net/occupation)

 

Cash for Coverage/ Brown Envelope Journalism

 

Cash for coverage or Brown Envelope Journalism (BEJ) refers to giving monetary inducement to journalists to encourage them to write positive stories, slant, or kill negative ones. Brown envelop as a term was first coined in 1994 after the UK political scandal (cash-for-questions-affair) in which The Guardian alleged that the owner of Harrods department store, Mohammed Al-Fayed, had paid a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons to ask a question using a brown-colored envelope for the transaction.

 

Journalistic parlance Brown Envelope has, over time, been used to describe monetary gifts concealed in brown envelopes and given to journalists during press briefings. In broader terms, Brown Envelope Syndrome (BES) refers to the potentiality of news sources (PR agents and/or their clients) giving, and journalists taking cash at press conferences or in the general course of their duty. It describes the propensity to give and take ‘bribes’ at any point in the value chain of journalistic sourcing and transmission of news content. So, BES as an expression in media practice can conveniently be used interchangeably with Cash for Coverage Syndrome (CFCs).

It’s a “syndrome” in the sense that giving and taking cash in the course of journalistic work manifests symptomatically and can consistently occur in varied but identifiable ways. The brown “envelope” could be in any color shade (white, green, or red), in naked cash or electronic form (bank transfers). Whatever color, form or means, Brown Envelopes, in the words of Dr. C Nwachukwu of the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), represent any “temptation wrapped in money.”

On the whole, the impact of such ‘temptation’ on content creation, presentation and dissemination are real: The Mass Media audience, the ultimate king, are misled; credibility of news content and platform is compromised setting off the stage for perennial confidence crisis between the media platform and its audience. Loss of audience confidence leads to loss of patronage (business)…and jobs.

Imagine what could happen when an individual, group of individuals, politicians or government buys off an entire edition of a newspaper, a day’s program on Radio/Television or the entire Internet space and decides that no one reads, hears or sees a particular content or that they see it in predetermined modes! Worse still, the individual or group(s) could decide to let their ‘trusting’ readers, viewers and listeners see/hear only what’s convenient and let them wallow in darkness. It’s a matter of life and death for the entire information and communication space.

Yet, the audience knows better, always able to isolate the chaff from the kernel. The reason media businesses rise and fall on content, much more on the credibility of the content. Yes, Content is King! Remember Marshall McLuhan’s postulation: “The Medium is the Message.”

 

 

It’s not just Cash

Brown Envelope or Cash For Coverage syndrome is a cankerworm. It’s much more than giving or taking cash. If brown envelopes are meant to conceal inducements (the reason the envelopes are brown, not white, in the first place), then, other forms of gifts or inducements, not manifest in clear cash benefit but whose intention is to influence story slants or to curry the journalist’s friendship/sympathy when critical information is at stake, should also pass for “Brown Envelopes.”

Consider non-cash gifts like holiday trips abroad, free training for journalists, birthday gifts and cakes, etc. Will these seemingly harmless ‘gifts’ influence the journalist’s coverage and slant of stories, especially when they matter to the audience?

Important gifts are no longer in brown envelopes; they are now in white ‘vessels’ to accomplish saintly ‘missions.’ If good journalism practice is anchored on Truth, Fairness, and Balance for credible information, education, and entertainment of the audience, any good gesture that seeks to influence good content creation and delivery is a cankerworm.

 

Cash for coverage Vs Journalism/PR Ethics

Journalism and Public Relations are complementary professions that profess truth and abhor distortion of information/communication. Cash for news coverage defies this basic principle. Among professionals, there is a general understanding that BES is very bad for good PR practice, much worse for good Journalism; it’s an unethical practice based on journalism and PR professional ethics. The Society for Professional Journalists (SPJ) has a Code of Ethics for members, the NUJ and Press Council also have a code of ethics, all aligning with good practice bordering on truthful, courageous, fairyland patriotic news reporting devoid of inducement. Yet, does the syndrome fester?

 

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO ASK FOR CASH BEFORE COVERAGE?

 

Asking for gratification can be covert (complaints about distance and cost of transportation etc) or overt (declaring what it would cost to attend a press conference and/or to publish content therefrom). What do we make of previous scandals?

Reasons for BES among journalists and PR practitioners (What they say)

 

 

Issues about African culture of gift-giving

 

 

Nigerians believe in giving and receiving gifts formally and informally. Many say this is one of the major reasons why it’s difficult to tackle this in Nigeria.

 

Issues about PR &Journalism ideology

 

 

Do quacks truly exist in journalism and PR practice? Who truly is a journalist; the one who can write and speak impeccable English or the one who is trained, grounded, and certified on the basics of good journalism? Should Journalism and PR be different from other key professions like Medicine and Law? Can I, as a journalist be hired by a law firm to defend a client in court simply because I could argue very well? Can a good Television analyst perform a surgery on a patient because he does so with words? Not cast in iron, but these and many more are issues that perhaps, could rub off on efforts to find answers to questions under discussion. How many journalists and PR ‘agents’ ended up becoming who they are today because they could not find jobs in their disciplines after graduation?

 

Issues about Training and Retraining:

 

 

Knowledge and competence breed self-confidence and self-respect. Good retraining programs for certified members of a given profession help to engender self-confidence and mutual respect; hence, they will respect the code of ethics and overcome ‘temptations wrapped in money,’ especially in a fragile economy.

 

Issues about preaching professionalism in a fragile economy:

 

Is       Nigeria really among the poorest of the poorest countries? Does it have 20% (10.5 million) of the world’s out-of-school children? How many media organizations in Africa will survive the next 10 years? How many newspapers have an average of 200,000 print-run daily? How many of them have an average of five pages of adverts per day to stay afloat? What is the average take-home pay of Nigerian journalists? How media organizations in Nigeria pay salaries as and when due? Can we work to create saints in hell? How many oases of plenteous integrity can we find in a desert of need?

 

Yet, I see light at the end of the tunnel. There are a few Josephs, a few Daniels, a few Shedrack, Meshack, and Abadenego left!

 

On the PR side, do practitioners face pressure from employers and clients (PR)?

 

 

 

SOLUTIONS

 

Clear identity or ideology for PR and Journalism

 

Improvement in training and retraining, remuneration and reward for excellence

 

The salience of the recent unbundling of Mass Communication courses in universities to the rescue?

 

Possible redefinition of the bounds of gift-giving; must the latitude be expanded to realistically reflect certain nuances? For instance, why do patients pay for hospital cards and for drugs, yet the doctor collects separate consultation fees, nurses ask for money to buy syringes. Hospital bills still come afterward???

 

 

Are journalists tying themselves up at a time market realities are getting grimmer?

 

Public-funded BBC, CNN, and GOOGLE take adverts even from Nigerian firms and they take sides in news coverage using genres that are neither hard news, nor Feature/ opinion, but all combined in non-clear-cut reporting called ADVOCACY NEWS, which is news with explicable bias.

 

Former Minister appointed Adviser center of Journalism 

THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS

 

 

Social Responsibility Theory: This presupposes that the media, in discharging its critical functions, acts in social interest and for the good of the society.  Reporting dispassionately…against business logic and profit motives. In the light of current realities, the big question: Is there a more professional way to commoditize news? There are different, just like there are varied products in other professions like Law and Medicine, etc.

 

 

Media Economics: Media as a going concern and profit-oriented theory in a competitive stressful market, driven more by corporate support than by audience clientele.

 

Four-way PR Model: Sensationalism, Full Information, Symmetry, and Asymmetry. GRUNIG and HUNT 1984)

 

 

 

CONCLUSION: The Big Question

Is cash for coverage a case of professional anomaly that has become a culture, or a case of inevitable industry reality that needs some professional rethinking/adjustment? If technology is, indeed, changing many things, to what extent can it be allowed to change social laws?

Dr Marcel Mbamalu, is the News Editor of The Guardian, presented this at The Jacksonites Biweekly Webinar on August 2, 2020

Opinion

Let President Tinubu Rename University of Lagos After Gowon, Not Abuja

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Adnan Mukhtar Tudun Wada

 

 

Adnan Mukhtar Tudun Wada

I was not happy when Northwest University Kano was renamed to Yusuf Maitama Sule University, as student leaders of that University then, we followed the interest of the students who were also not happy with the renaming at that time for one reason; the renaming was politically motivated, to hurt the founder of the institution Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso. I was busy mobilising students to protest, the next day I was invited to the DSS for questions where I spent hours and all the people we were mobilising the protest together ran and dissociated themselves from it. I have no option but to plead with the DSS to release me, assuring them that not a single student would protest the government’s action.

The renaming has affected many students who are seeking admission abroad; it’s Northwest University on my transcript and Yusuf Maitama Sule University on my certificate. This is kinda confusing and not good at all.

Politicians should immortalise individuals in their new projects not existing ones. The renaming of the University of Abuja to Yakubu Gowon University is not good for the university’s alumni.

The President should have found a new project or built a new University by naming it after the former Head of State.

I don’t support the idea of playing politics by renaming our universities and this happens mostly in Nigeria.

Imagine waking up renaming the University of Maiduguri to Mohammed Goni University, Yobe State University to Ibrahim Geidam University, the University of Ibadan to Abiola Ajimobi University, the University of Lagos to Lateef Jakande University.

It will be bad for the alumni of the aforementioned universities to come across this.

Why is this only happening in Africa? Look at Makerere University in Uganda, it was established in 1920 but despite Yoweri Mosevenni’s long reign; he didn’t for once attempt to change it to even his name for selfish reasons.

He didn’t think of renaming the Entebbe International Airport after him but in Nigeria, we have this culture of renaming everything after individuals.

If you want to be immortalised, leave a lasting legacy as Gowon did in establishing NYSC. That enough is Okay and better than naming an institution after him.

President Tinubu should have renamed the University of Lagos after Gowon, not Abuja. I’m sure his people will reject this not for any reason but because of the large number of people that will be affected by it.

The University of Abuja Alumni were all crying over this painful decision.

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Opinion

Ibrahim Abdullahi Waiya: Champion of Civil Society and Good Governance in Northern Nigeria

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Ibrahim Abdullahi Waiya, is an influential Civil Society figure in Kano State and Northern Nigeria. He is currently serving as the Executive Director, Citizens for Development and Education (CDE), he has dedicated many years of his civil society activism as advocate for the promotion of democracy, good governance, anti-corruption, peace building and women empowerment

Amb. Waiya, holds number of academic qualifications, including a Higher National Diploma in Public Administration from Kano State Polytechnic, a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from Usmanu Danfodio University, Sokoto, Master’s in Public International Law at Maryam Abacha, American University, Maradi, and he is currently pursuing a doctor of philosophy at Skyline University, Kano in International Relations

In the course of his career, he held several positions and managed a number of projects. He served as the Director, Alhilal Foundation, from 2003 to 2007, an organization which focused on women empowerment, through basic literacy and skills acquisition. He later coordinated the North West Zonal Office of the Mallam Aminu Kano International Foundation. Amb. Ibrahim Waiya, led and coordinated a number of Local Government Councils Elections Observation missions across 19 Northern states.

In 2011, Waiya managed the Campaign against Drug Abuse under the auspices of Northern Youth Assembly, a youth driven platform with leadership structures in the Nineteen Northern States. He served as Secretary, for both, Kano State Stakeholders Committee on Anti-Drug Abuse Campaign and Kano State Stakeholders Committee on Anti-Child Abuse, a project which was coordinated by the office of the Special Adviser, Child Welfare and National Drug Law Enforcement Agency. His involvement in election observation coordination missions and various public engagements, highlights his commitment to civic engagement towards community development, democracy and good governance

Waiya’s extensive experience includes free consultancy support services to numerous Government Ministries and Agencies such as: Kano State Ministry for Women Affairs and Social Development, Kano State Ministry for Community and Rural Development, office of the Special Adviser to the Governor of Kano State on Child Welfare, Ministry for Special duties, office of the special adviser, joint security services. He has facilitated numerous training workshops and seminars, impacting his knowledge, skills, experience on the community, particularly for community based organizations

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In recognition of his contributions, he was appointed to several key positions, such as the President, of the Kano Civil Society Forum, Chairman of the Conference of Northern States Civil Society Networks, Convener, Nigeria for Peace Project, Managing partner, United Nigeria Project, Head of Secretariat, Kano Peace Committee, Secretary General, National Action for Women Agenda,(NAWA), chairman, Board of Trustees, Northern Youth Assembly, (Majalisar Matasan Arewa) Fellow, Institute of Security and Strategic Studies, Fellow, Institute of International Peace and Secure Society, Fellow, Institute of Business Diplomacy and Financial Management, member, Commission of Inquiry on Missing persons, member, Implementation Committee, on the Recommendations of the Report of the Commission of inquiry on missing persons, member, Commission of Inquiry to investigate, various political violence and cases of missing persons, that occurred in the State from 2015 – 2023, member, Commission of inquiry to investigate protest, arson and destruction of public and private properties that occurred from 1st – 10th August, 2024 Amb. Waiya, served as Consultant on various government projects, such as: Kano State Security Trust Fund, Safe Corridor, Campaign against Drug Abuse, across the 44 Local Government Council Areas. Amb. Waiya”s active participation in peace building, policy advocacy and legislative reform has continued to impact positive change in Kano State, the North and Nigeria at large.

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Opinion

“I Transition to PR and Digital Marketing to Transform Brands Globally” – Ibrahim Ayyuba Isah

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As 2024 comes to a close, Ibrahim Ayyuba Isah reflects on his journey from journalism to public relations (PR) and digital marketing. With over a decade of experience in media and communications, Ibrahim’s transition was fueled by a desire to empower businesses—starting with Northern Nigeria but extending globally—to build impactful narratives and achieve sustainable growth.

“Every brand, regardless of location, deserves access to the tools and expertise needed to thrive in today’s fast-paced world,” Ibrahim says. “My goal has always been to bridge the gap in strategic communication, ensuring that no business is left behind.”

From Journalism to Strategic Communication

Ibrahim’s illustrious journalism career spans over a decade, during which he served as a Senior Reporter at TVC News, covering critical developments, including the Kano State Government House for three successive administrations. His work involved breaking major news stories, producing multimedia content, and engaging audiences through digital platforms.

“I’ve always been passionate about communication, but I realized I wanted to do more than report stories—I wanted to help brands craft their own,” Ibrahim shares. “That’s what led me to pivot into PR and digital marketing.”

To equip himself for this new journey, Ibrahim pursued advanced studies, earning a Master’s in Communication Studies and a Master’s in Public Relations from Bayero University, Kano. He further honed his expertise with a Professional Certificate in Digital Marketing from the London School of Business Administration and a Master Diploma in Digital Marketing from the Digital Marketing Skills Institute. These credentials underscore his commitment to mastering the art of strategic communication.

Empowering Brands Through Ayrah Media Concept

As the CEO of Ayrah Media Concept (AMC), Ibrahim leads a PR and creative agency that provides businesses with tailored solutions, including PR consulting, social media management, corporate campaigns, and digital marketing.

“My vision is to empower brands to connect with their audiences, tell compelling stories, and achieve global relevance,” Ibrahim explains. “Through AMC, we’re showing businesses—whether in Northern Nigeria or beyond—that they can reach new heights with the right strategies.”

In 2024, AMC worked on several impactful campaigns, including Ibrahim’s role as a Lead Consultant for the WOFAN-ICON2 project in partnership with Mastercard Foundation, where he developed and executed PR and communication strategies to amplify the project’s impact.

Changing Perceptions and Building Bridges

Transitioning into PR and digital marketing came with challenges, including shifting perceptions about its value.

“Many businesses see PR and digital marketing as optional rather than essential,” Ibrahim says. “But the results are transformative. Strategic communication is not just about visibility; it’s about building trust, credibility, and lasting connections with your audience.”

This philosophy drives Ibrahim’s approach, ensuring that businesses of all sizes—whether local startups or established corporations—can access high-quality PR and marketing services.

Looking Ahead

Ibrahim’s vision for the future extends far beyond regional boundaries. While his roots and passion lie in Northern Nigeria, his focus is on creating strategies that resonate globally.

“Brands in Kano, Lagos, Abuja, or even New York share a common goal: to connect with people and make an impact,” he says. “My mission is to ensure that every business, regardless of size or location, has the tools and strategies to achieve that.”

In 2025, Ibrahim plans to document his professional journey in a book that will explore his experiences as a journalist and PR expert, offering insights into the evolving landscape of communication and its role in business success.

A Message of Gratitude

As he reflects on the year, Ibrahim expresses his gratitude to those who have supported his journey. “I’m incredibly thankful to my mentors, collaborators, and clients who have believed in my vision. Together, we’ve shown that impactful communication has the power to transform lives and businesses.”

With a clear vision and an unwavering commitment to excellence, Ibrahim Ayyuba Isah is poised to lead the way in redefining PR and digital marketing, not just in Nigeria but across the globe.

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