Leemekzy:
ACP (assistant commissioner of police) not APC.

classicfrank4u:
Thank God for him..
The Military should be deployed to Edo state ASAP, things are getting out of hand over there.

slawormiir:
Damnnn niggarrrr
Isoright....
Bini dey hot but he nor go fit hot reach where i dey...

If not 20 men go fall instantly

berrystunn:


Is there A and P. C there ??

I already edited it, I just they vex for APC .

classicfrank4u:
Thank God for him..
The Military should be deployed to Edo state ASAP, things are getting out of hand over there.

Brandonx:
You see why I don't believe anything I see online?
See belle an obviously corrupt policeman

Nairaland is gradually becoming the dump yard of fake news!

Slimm01:
Stop running your hands on keypads spewing rubbish. Nairaland is not a direct news source. They extract news and delivers it to the forum....with the various links to the main news source pasted. Be guided!

slawormiir:
Damnnn niggarrrr
Isoright....
Bini dey hot but he nor go fit hot reach where i dey...

If not 20 men go fall instantly

Brandonx:

Are you normal? So because the link to the news is there makes the news genuine ?
The mods keep rushing to push news to the front without proper verification as if it's a competition.

Slimm01:
And I keep telling you that you are stupid because how the hell do you expect nairaland to verify the news when they are not the real source of the news. Use your common sense naa, Haba! That's why the web link to the news source is always pasted so that you can know where the copied the news came from. Now, it's then left for you to rain your abuses on the said news source, not nairaland. Oponu!

Brandonx:

So you are saying nairaland is a dump yard where everyone can drop anything and mods would pushed to the front page, it's then left for the readers to verify and you feel you made sense?
You are even more stupid than I thought!

Slimm01:
Nobody drops anything on nairaland as a dump yard. It's we members that goes to import the news and paste them on the forum with the web link to the news media for we members to read and air whatever opinion we have about such news and it's source. Nairaland doesn't push a news to the front page without a link to the news source. That's the rule. You could have been making sense if these news came directly from nairaland as a news source such as punch, vanguard, sahara reporters and e.t.c. Chai! Na wa o! I tire for you.

Brandonx:

I'm not against the news here I'm against unverified news on the front page. Or you think most persons have that time to start going to the link to check the authenticity?

Brandonx:

I'm not against the news here I'm against unverified news on the front page. Or you think most persons have that time to start going to the link to check the authenticity?

naptu2:
Newspaper, blog and forum. The problem with the media today

A lot of people are confused about the difference between a newspaper, a blog and a forum. This is responsible for a lot of the problems in and criticisms of the media today. I’ll explain the difference in the processes.


Newspapers.

Newspapers deploy huge resources in order to be able to report the news accurately and in a timely fashion. The most important thing in the news business is not your ability to write perfect English; rather it is your contacts. I’ll give an example using the recent story of the demolition of the Akachi Tower in Imo State.

A story went viral on social media that the Akachi Tower, which was built by the APC government of former Governor Rochas Okorocha, was being demolished by the new PDP government of Governor Emeka Ihedioha. There were pictures that accompanied the story. What should a newspaper do when it hears that kind of story? These are the most important resources that a newspaper has:

1) Reporters/stringers: A newspaper should send its reporter or stringer in Imo State to go to the tower to see what’s happening for himself. (A stringer is a freelance reporter). The reporter would be expected to do the following:
A) Take pictures of the building as it is being demolished
B) Interview the people that were demolishing the building to find out who sent them and why they were demolishing the building.
C) Interview eyewitnesses on the scene.

2) Contacts: Newspaper reporters and editors ensure that they have the phone numbers and contact details of prominent people in society; so that they can easily call them up if the need arises. In fact, reporters and editors cultivate friendships with these people, so that they can easily interview them when the need arises. Therefore, the newspaper should try to interview the following people:

A) The governor or his media aide or the commissioner of information: To put the government’s position on record. The allegation was that the government was demolishing the Owerri Tower and therefore, it is necessary to get the government’s official position on the matter (in other words, to hear from the horse’s mouth). The journalist must ask the government official (i) if it’s true that the government is demolishing the tower (ii) why the government is demolishing the tower (if i is true), (iii) the cost implication of demolishing the tower, (iv) and if it’s not the government that is demolishing the tower, then the journalist must ask the government official the legal, security and financial implications of the destruction of the tower.

B) The Family/Land Owners: It was also alleged that the tower was demolished by a family that owned the land on which the tower was built. It was alleged that the government headed by Rochas Okorocha seized the land from the family and the family sued the government and won back their land before destroying the tower (some reports say that the family denied this claim). The journalist must ask the family (i) if it is true that they destroyed the tower, (ii) if it’s true, then the journalist must ask why they destroyed the tower (that is, on what authority did they destroy the tower), (iii) the journalist must also find out the history of their dispute with the government over the land, (iv) If they did not demolish the tower, then the journalist must ask how they heard about the demolition of the tower, (v) their opinion on the demolition of the tower, (vi) what they think about the allegation that they demolished the tower, (vi) what they intend to do next.

C) Rochas Okorocha or his spokesman: That tower was built by Rochas Okorocha, therefore, the newspaper must ask Okorocha (i)how he feels about the demolition of the tower, (ii) if it is true that his administration seized the land from a family (iii) what he intends to do next.


D) Sources: Sometimes the person being interviewed might not want to reveal what is really going on. This might be because of their strategy or because they are not authorized to say what’s really going on or because they do not want to implicate themselves. Therefore, it is important that the newspaper has trusted and reliable sources in government, among Senator Okorocha’s aides or close associates or inside the family that allegedly owns the land. These sources may provide more information beyond what was publicly stated. The newspaper should also ensure that it contacts multiple sources, so that it can determine if their stories tally.

These things must be done in a timely fashion and before deadline. I remember what a professor told his class a long time ago. He said that you can’t bringing your reports to Broadcasting House in Ikoyi when the drums are already beating (remember the old drum signal that preceded the news on Radio Nigeria?).

---

Blogs
Blogs began as a means by which people expressed their opinions on things that were dear to their hearts. Some blogs were basically diaries in which the bloggers wrote about major things that happened to them and about their daily lives. Other blogs were about the bloggers’ professional interests and hobbies. For example, an auto mechanic could create a blog about cars and give advice to and learn new tricks from his readers (it could also be a means by which he advertises his services), a musician could create a music blog and share tips and techniques with his readers, a baker could create a food blog, etc.

Most of these blogs are run by individuals and the topics above do not require great investment in resources like journalists, sources and stringers. The blogs are instead based on the knowledge, passion and interests of the blogger.

Some types of blogs require that the blogger has good contacts/sources, for example, a political blog, a defence and security blog or an entertainment gossip blog would require that the blogger has good sources.

However, these blogs are not news sites. They are more like the old newspaper columns, which depend on the knowledge, skill and contacts of the columnists. They were not news reporting sites.

Linda Ikeji was a model and therefore she had a lot of contacts in the entertainment industry. She also studied English Language at the University of Lagos and she was a writer. These helped her to create a blog about the entertainment industry. Gradually she also added political news to her blog and it became the biggest blog in Nigeria. Lots of people subsequently attempted to copy her model by creating news blogs.

The problem is that these people do not have the resources to gather authentic news. They copy stories from social media and other sites and they do not have the reporters, stringer, sources or contacts to verify if these stories are true. So these blogs often post false information.

---

Forums
These are discussion sites in which a user can create a topic and other users can comment on that topic. Most of the content in a forum are created by users of that forum.

Forums could be about specific topics, e.g. Cyber Eagles and the old BBC 606 Forum are football forums, or they could be general interest forums like Nairaland.

Users of general interest forums can discuss about things that are happening in their lives, or they can use articles and posts from other media to start discussion threads. For example, Nairaland has many subforums like the Diary Section (which is like a blog), the Family Section (in which people mainly discuss things that are happening in their lives) and the Politics Section (in which 90% of the topics are taken from other mediums).

So, how do you verify what’s accurate and what’s not on a forum?

Forums usually do not have reporters or stringers. People who run forums do not usually call the people that are being discussed to verify that the information in a thread is accurate; rather, forums depend on their members to challenge the information that is posted on their threads.

For example, Nairaland does not have reporters and stringers. Nairaland does not pay people in all the 36 states and Abuja to source for news for it. The admin and mods do not usually call public figures to verify the stories that are posted on the forum. Instead, Nairaland depends on the credibility of other sources (e.g. links to stories on reputable news sites) and the ability of members to debunk inaccurate and fake news.

Unfortunately, many people do not understand this. There was a particular individual that criticised Nairaland and its admin and mods because he believed that they did not do a good job of fact checking and verifying stories. He decided to create a thread in which he planned to show them how it’s done. I decided to frustrate him, because I knew that he had no idea what he was writing about.

Everyday this guy would select threads from the home page and fact check them to determine whether they were true or not (he actually wrote “True” or “False” at the bottom of each post). I knew that the guy had no reporters or correspondents and I knew that he did not know how to properly research stories, so I frustrated him.

For example, there was a thread on the home page about a person that confessed that he shot 2Pac Shakur. This guy ruled that the information was false because nobody had admitted to killing Shakur and the police were still investigating his death. What he did not know (but I knew quite well), was that 2Pac was shot on at least two separate occasions.

2Pac was fatally shot in September 1996. We do not actually know who shot him (although there are many good theories about that). However, 2Pac was also shot 5 times in November 1994. It was this incident that led to his feud with the Notorious BIG, Sean “Puffy” Combs and Bad Boy Records.

2Pac accused the Notorious BIG, Sean Puffy Combs and Jimmy Henchman of being behind the 1994 attack. In 2011, Dexter Isaac, a man who was serving a life sentence for murder, confessed that he was one of the 3 men that shot 2Pac in 1994 and that Jimmy Henchman paid him to attack and rob 2Pac. Jimmy Henchman is also currently serving a life sentence for ordering a hit on another rapper. That rapper was shot dead.

This was what the thread was about, but that guy ruled that the story was false and so I corrected him. He also ruled that a lot of true stories were false and vice versa and I corrected him on each occasion until he gave up and abandoned the thread.

Nairaland officially has 2,337,685 members (it’s less than that because many people have multiple accounts) and chances are that, if I create a thread in which I claim that there has been an explosion on Awolowo Road, there will be another Nairalander on Awolowo Road that will either corroborate or denounce my story. This - the use of links to official sites and reputable news sites and the fact that people that are mentioned on Nairaland threads can sign up and state their own side of the story, are the ways in which Nairaland verifies information.


Competition

Like I wrote earlier when I referred to the drums at Radio Nigeria, it is important that a journalist files his reports on time. No one likes stale news. However, this has led to a problem. Blogs and social media can get the news out very quickly, partly because they do not have to go through the usual procedures that a journalist should follow, i.e. hear from multiple sources, contact the subject to get his side of the story, etc. Yet, established newspapers have to compete with these bloggers and with social media. This has led to a degradation of journalistic standards. A perfect example is what has happened to Vanguard Newspapers.

Vanguard was one of the biggest and most reputable newspapers in Nigeria in the 1980s. However, it has lost its reputation in the past 6 years. This is partly because they are in a hurry to publish stories without properly verifying that they are correct. They have had to apologise to public figures numerous times because they have made false allegations and written untruths about them. The newspaper is now no better than the many blogs out there that are published by a single individual who sits in his/her bedroom copying stories from social media accounts.

Babadee1900:
Too much of fake news these days...

We don’t even know what to believe again.

Lisaint:
The what about this constable?

Brandonx:
You see why I don't believe anything I see online?
See belle an obviously corrupt policeman

Nairaland is gradually becoming the dump yard of fake news!

Ryan03:
pls just shut up. How many Nigerian men have flat tummy at his age? Just come online to insult your father

Brandonx:

What's wrong with you ? My dad is older than this man and has a flat stomach.
You think everyone is like your father ?