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🇳🇬 Nigeria /Culture & Society

NBC’s real struggle

From The Punch · (5m ago) English Critical tone

Summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

TLDR

  • The Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) is criticized for its outdated approach to regulating media in the digital age.
  • The NBC's threats of sanctions against media houses are seen as a continuation of 20th-century tactics that are irrelevant to current broadcasting realities.
  • The article argues that the NBC lacks institutional autonomy and struggles to adapt to a media landscape driven by market demands and audience-driven content.

The Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) appears to be caught in a time warp, issuing threats and warnings to media houses that reflect a 20th-century understanding of broadcasting in a 21st-century digital world. In the lead-up to the next general election, the NBC's recent statement cautioning electronic broadcasters against inciting crime or public disorder feels like a rehash of old tactics, ignoring the radical transformation of news-making and consumption.

The way they cautioned media houses not to incite crime or public disorder, one would be forgiven for concluding that the disorder in Nigeria is the fault of media houses.

— The Punch Editorial BoardCritiquing the NBC's framing of media responsibility for public disorder.

This approach, characterized by waving broadcast codes and threatening sanctions, fails to acknowledge the reality of a media landscape where anyone with a camera phone can be a newsmaker. The NBC's struggle seems to stem from an inability to grasp its relevance in a market-driven environment where regulators are often perceived as redundant. Their insistence on outdated broadcast codes, drafted during an era of government-controlled media, is out of step with the current competitive and audience-focused media ecosystem.

Their real struggle is that they neither understand nor can figure out their relevance in a world where broadcasting is driven by the market and the regulator is redundant.

— The Punch Editorial BoardAnalyzing the NBC's core challenge in adapting to the modern media landscape.

Furthermore, the NBC's actions, such as the swift response to a complaint by Bayo Onanuga, suggest a lack of institutional autonomy and a tendency towards partisanship. The article posits that the NBC's real challenge lies in its failure to adapt its regulatory framework to the complexities of the modern media age, where audience demands and the proliferation of content platforms render its traditional methods ineffective. Its relevance is further diminished by the fact that many Nigerians now consume news through social media, bypassing traditional broadcast channels.

The NBC does not hide its partisanship; it took one complaint by Bayo Onanuga in 2023 for them to proceed with a shakedown of the media houses.

— The Punch Editorial BoardIllustrating the perceived bias and lack of autonomy within the NBC.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by The Punch. Summarized and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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