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)
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
