OAA,
If you have troubles with the English language--or with understanding what I wrote-- admit it and seek help. Both the presidency and its apologists said media reporting of the statement that the Plateau killings were a retaliation for the theft of cows was the trigger for the retaliatory killings of Muslim travelers. Since the presidency made the same statement, it means, by its own logic, it's also complicit in the retaliatory killings of Muslims. That's my claim, and it's such simple, straightforward logic.
From what you wrote, you obviously know nothing about libel and sedition. I won't waste my time debating that with you.
Farooq
Farooq Kperogi, PhD
Associate Professor
Journalism and Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media
Social Science Building Room 5092
402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw, GA 30144
Office phone: 470-578-7735
Fax: 470-578-9153
Cell: 404-573-9697
Website: www.farooqkperogi.com
Twitter:@farooqkperogi
Sent from my 4G LTE Android device. Please forgive typos.
Associate Professor
Journalism and Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media
Social Science Building Room 5092
402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw, GA 30144
Office phone: 470-578-7735
Fax: 470-578-9153
Cell: 404-573-9697
Website: www.farooqkperogi.com
Twitter:@farooqkperogi
Sent from my 4G LTE Android device. Please forgive typos.
On Sun, Jul 8, 2018, 5:12 PM Windows Live 2018 <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
--Now my point is that Buhari apologists are to be separated from the Presidency. Yes, the Presidency issued a statement which to ALL intents and purposes said a similar thing to what Corona has denied saying. I quite appreciate the international angle you brought to bear on your argument regarding such denials. At least the Presidency never denied issuing the statement. This is why I'm concerned about your headline on the complicity of the Presidency.
I checked the meaning of the word on phone app version of the Oxford dictionary to ensure my assu.ptiin of the meaning is accurate. It sure is.. It is defined as involvement WITH OTHERS to commit morally wrong or unlawful activity. If Ciro.a denied making a claim that is similar to the release of the Presidency. That is a matter that can be taken up with him including asking the telephone company to submit a transcript of the conversation. Until that is done Corona cannot be declared a liar. As a professor of journalism and practising journalist I'm very sure you are aware of the provisions of the law of libel, defamation and sedition.
Back to the Presidency, in which sense can the issued statement be said to be unlawful activity with others? In which sense can the statement be said to have contributed to the commuting of retaliatory murders? Can you point to which aspect of the statement did that other than your write up pandering to the allegations of others that the Miyetti Allah admission of retaliatory murders serves as instigation to further retaliatory murders. Had President Buhari himself on the earlier Benue episode not chided people to desist from retaliatory murders?
I would ordinarily have settled for your explanation that headlinescare merely invitations to read but your concluding paragraph actually reinforced governments culpability. In other words government is accused of criminal intent in its issued statement which was to ALL intents and purposes meant to clarify who started this round of violence first by killing fellow human beings first : I.e. were the first victims because contrary to the initial claims the heardsmen did not retaliate simply because they lost cattle but because their members were slain in the process of rustling. How does this clarification make the Presidency complicit in anything in the definition of the word offered above? I stated that the fact that herdsmen were killed does not give them any lawful right to recompense in retaliatory action. No where did the government statement say it gave them this lawful right.
I then went on put the blame on government not because of any complicity but because if failed to FULLY exercise its lawful duties by not arresting the herdsmen who actually admitted committing murder for any reasons. Had they been arrested perhaps that would short circuit the electricity of serial retaliation because they would have been in protective custody helping government unravel the identity of who the hustlers were which would lead to their arrest and prosecution alongside the retaliatory herdsmen murderers.
In the end we both agree on government shortcomings. You interpreted the shortcomings as complicity; I explained it as negligence on the part of government. CGiven the provisions of sedition cited above you leave your flanks open to be sued alongside your newspaper by the Attorney General on the instructions of the Presidency for deliberate incitement of the populace against government for no lawful reasons. It is my view that you should avoid exposing yourself and your newspaper to such vulnerability in the future through more careful use of words.
OAA.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.-------- Original message --------From: farooqkperogi@gmail.comDate: 08/07/2018 07:34 (GMT+00:00)To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Plateau Massacre, Presidency's Complicity, and Escapist Scapegoating of the News Media
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I am not sure you are responding to my article. The government--and its apologists--claim that Miyetti Allah's Ciroma was misquoted (some, such as Professor Jibrin Ibrahim, even so far as to lie that Ciroma's interview was "fabricated") as saying that the killings in Plateau were a retaliation for the theft of 300 cows. Premium Times apologized for the report ONLY because they discovered that their reporter got his quotes from his colleague at the Nation newspaper who spoke directly with Ciroma, but he wrote his story as if Ciroma issued a press statement. Jibo and other Buhari apologists twisted the Premium Times apology to advance the fraudulent narrative that Premium Times admitted to fabricating a story that escalated the Plateau conflict.
Now, my point is that the Presidency OFFICIALLY released a statement that essentially repeated the exact sentiments that Ciroma has now denied expressing to the Nation reporter: that people were killed in retaliation for the theft of cows. Government apologists say it was the reporting of Ciroma's statement-- that the Plateau killings were a retaliation for the theft of cows-- that instigated retaliatory killings. That is a singularly stupid claim to make. But let us, for the sake of argument, agree that, that was the case. Since the presidency made the same claim as Ciroma was alleged to have made in an official press release, which the media reported, isn't the presidency also complicit in the retaliations? I am using the logic of the government and its apologists.
Farooq
Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.Associate ProfessorJournalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & MediaSocial Science BuildingRoom 5092 MD 2207402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter: @farooqkperogAuthor of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
--On Sat, Jul 7, 2018 at 11:26 AM Windows Live 2018 <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
--I disagree with the thesis of government COMPLICITY in this write up. The duty of government is the dissemination of accurate information to counter fake news. That some people acted on the accurate information to embark on further retaliatory murders is their sole culpabilitity.
Had the presidency not given a prompt fuller disclosure of information at its disposal then the herdsmen would have been misrepresented as an inexplicably bloodthirsty group; this information in no way justifies retaliatory murders on the grounds that Fulani herdsmen were killed during the cattle rustling.
In addition to the information provided by the Presidency ALL the herdsmen operating in the area ought to have been arrested to help government unmask the retaliatory murderers. It would also stop the domino effect of serial retaliations while holding recent culprits immediately accountable.
Government failed in the completion of its duties in this regard and although it may not be in a position to pre-empt the start of hostilities it could have arrested the extension and thereby save more lives.
As I maintained in an earlier post governments immediate goal should be to FULLY disarm the herdsmen and provide government armed protection to ALL herdsmen communities (partly funded by increases taxation on net worth of cattle) to obviate the need for herdsmen to resort to vigilante justice for rustlers.
This should be the case until settlement of herdsmen is fully completed and integrated into the National Develooment Plan.
OAA
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------From: farooqkperogi@gmail.comDate: 07/07/2018 07:55 (GMT+00:00)To: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Plateau Massacre, Presidency's Complicity, and Escapist Scapegoating of the News Media
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--Saturday, July 7, 2018
Plateau Massacre, Presidency's Complicity, and Escapist Scapegoating of the News Media
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
After Premium Times' over-the-top but nonetheless admirably ethical and well-intentioned apology and firing of its reporter for reporting, without verification, a certain Danladi Ciroma's coldhearted justification for the Plateau massacre, a motley crowd of incorrigibly peevish government apologists looking for a convenient diversion from the gross incompetence of the government seized on the apology like a drowning man clutches at every twig and worked themselves into a pitifully maniacal feeding frenzy on the Nigerian news media.
Some even went so far as to self-righteously wail that Premium Times' apology won't bring back the people who died as a result of its inaccurate reporting! Seriously? You have to truly take leave of your senses—if you had any to begin with—to assume that it was the reporting of Ciroma's alleged justification for the savage mass murders of Berom farmers that ignited the equally unjust, barbaric murders of innocent Muslim travelers along Bauchi-Jos road.
Retaliatory murders are an abiding feature of communal conflicts in Nigeria. I covered several of them when I was a reporter. The perpetrators of these murders don't need any prodding from the media to give vent to their bloodthirsty urges. It's unforgivably simplistic to think that the news media are all-powerful, irresistible social syringes that inject thoughts and attitudes into people with immediate and dramatic effect.
In any case, this is not the first time Miyetti Allah's officials have been reported in the media to have justified, claimed responsibility for, or issued threats of, mass murders, which, to my knowledge, they have never denied. For instance, on January 4, 2018, chairman of Benue State's Miyetti Allah, Garus Gololo, told the BBC that the mass murder in Benue was a retaliation for the theft of 1,000 cattle. As far as I know, Gololo hasn't disowned this interview. How was that different from what Ciroma was alleged to have said?
The Nation, incidentally Bola Tinubu's newspaper, which originally published the quotes attributed to Ciroma, hasn't repudiated its story, much less apologize for it. In fact, Yusufu Aminu Idegu, the Nation's reporter who spoke with Ciroma, insists that his reporting was faithful to what Ciroma actually told him during a phone interview, and his paper stands by him.
Interestingly, Ciroma admitted that he DID SPEAK with the reporter. He only said he was misquoted. "I told the reporter that leaders at the local and national levels should come together and resolve this crisis before it is too late," he told Premium Times on June 29, 2018. So people who said the Nation's reporter "fabricated" the interview, which other newspapers, including Premium Times, published are the real duplicitous fabricators. Not even Ciroma says the interview was fabricated.
From my experience as a journalist and as a journalism teacher, I can bet my bottom dollar that Ciroma only recanted the interview because of the massive backlash it instigated. Had Gololo's own interview with the BBC inspired a similar pushback, he might have denied it as well. This is an all-too-familiar media stratagem.
And it isn't just Nigerian public figures and public officials who traffic in this. For instance, sometime in 2012, the mayor of my city here in the US sued me and one of my final-year journalism students who wrote a story for our class website based on a speech I invited the mayor to deliver to my students. During the Q and A session, the mayor got carried away and talked about a certain "shady" land developer's unacceptable ethical infractions without mentioning his name. My student put the pieces together and was able to identify who the "shady" developer was. She interviewed the developer and wrote her story.
The mayor sued and said my student made up the story. (Politicians say this everywhere when they get into trouble for what they say). Thankfully, we had the full video recording of his talk, which we uploaded on our class website. The developer's lawyer found the video recording and brought it to the mayor's attention. That was the end of the story.
I should point out that what the Nation reporter did, that is, sharing his report with his colleagues from other media houses, is not unusual, either. It's called pack journalism, and it happens even here in the United States. I hate it, but it is what it is.
People who know nothing about journalism are also saying that the Nation reporter's admission that he did not record his interview with Ciroma somehow invalidated his claims to have accurately reported him. In journalism, it is perfectly ethical and even legal to write a news story from unrecorded interviews. In fact, it is legal to write a story and even reconstruct quotes from memory so long as the quotes are consistent with what the interviewer says. Google Janet Malcolm and read up on her case with a psychoanalyst who sued her for attributing quotes to him that he said he never uttered. She won. Of course, I always tell my students to record their interviews AND take notes because most politicians will dispute a story when it provokes an unanticipated backlash.
In all of this, what galls me is the utter hypocrisy of ignoring the presidency's own prejudicial statement on the Plateau massacre and pretending that Ciroma was accused of saying something that was unheard of. The presidency basically said almost the same thing that Ciroma is now disclaiming. This was how the presidency traced the trigger for the bloodletting in Plateau in an official statement: "According to information available to the Presidency, about 100 cattle had been rustled by a community in Plateau State, and some herdsmen were killed in the process." That statement isn't substantively different from what Miyetti Allah's Ciroma was supposedly falsely quoted to have said: that the carnage was a retaliation for the theft of 300 cows. Will the presidency also have the decency to apologize, like Premium Times did, for disseminating "falsehood"?
If newspapers had cast headlines based on the press release from the presidency that went something like: "Plateau: death of 200 people retaliation for theft of 100 cattle--Presidency" it would have been accurate and would have stoked the same outrage that the quote attributed to Ciroma did. Remember that headlines are not designed to capture everything the body of a story contains because they can't; they simply function to invite the reader to discover the content.
The presidency's statement was issued a day after the crisis when tempers were still high and before an official investigation was conducted. That's not how to de-escalate conflict. If the presidency is efficient enough to know the cause of the conflict only one day after it occurred, it should have used that almost prescient prowess to forestall it so that it won't be in the business of apportioning blames and pointing out who started what first before official investigations. Every government's ultimate goal should be to save lives.
Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.Associate ProfessorJournalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & MediaSocial Science BuildingRoom 5092 MD 2207402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter: @farooqkperogAuthor of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
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