- Beats organisation has some uses for news reporters
The desire to associate and to keep together with one’s kind has been a constant in human organisation. So, journalists have exhibited these human traits, especially in beat associations. Such associations bring together journalists who cover the same area of society and human experience. So, we have political reporters associations as we have financial reporters associations.
It is hard to stop such associations, even if we do so formally. That is the conundrum that will face the Nigerian Press Organisation (NPO) as it has decided to place a formal ban on all such beat associations. Ordinarily, it can be seen as tour de force for principle in journalism.
As a principle, there is nothing wrong with beat reporters coalescing to share notes and advance the cause of the profession. An association of sports reporters can work to organise training for their kinds, share ideas on how sports reporting can better enhance sports coverage and mass enjoyment.
In the United States, the sports writers often determine the players of the year among other awards for the major sports in the country, be they football, soccer, baseball or basketball.
But the reporters do not engage in what many have turned such cherish organisations to on our shores. Here, such associations have for years become platforms for self-enrichment and professional compromise. Even fellow journalists vie for the high posts in such organisations because of the expectation that it will redound in hefty and feathery nests.
That was the reason the NPO decided to bar them. One of the shoddy examples was the recent string of awards by reporters in the National Assembly to some lawmakers. The perception is that the awards are made for filthy lucre. How could they be giving awards and get paid for it? That is the issue that the public and others who are concerned about professional integrity have raised about these beat reporters.
If reporters see their beats as opportunity to bring their kinds under one umbrella to promote stellar journalism, it would raise little eyebrows as we see in the advanced countries.
There are two issues involved here. One, reporters are using these platforms because of the shoddy remunerations they get for work of great mental and physical stress. Reporters are not well-paid and, to add to this, some organisations are having backlogs of salaries. Many of the reporters love their jobs, but they have to fend for themselves and families. Their take-home pay can hardly cover their needs. They have had to resort to “extras” to keep up. That does not justify what they do, but explains it. For journalists to take their eyes off such compromises, the employers ought to pay attention to their remunerations.
Two, some of the companies they work for do same in the yearly awards lined up at the end of every years to top politicians, political office holders and business elite. The awards do not come free and they help boost the coffers of the newspapers. The bosses are not showing good examples to their subordinate staff when they are guilty of what they condemn.
What we need, therefore, is not outright ban. We need to calibrate a set of rules for these journalists to organise these beats. For instance, any sort of awards should be forbidden. It is not the job of journalists to pour accolades on those they cover. They are to report those they cover, when they do well and when they do ill. Awards only show a one-sided vista, and it shows deference rather than scrutiny, which is the hallmark of great journalism. Outright ban will push them underground, and make them difficult to monitor.
