Is Jounalism advocacy? A short reply to Abdullahi O Haruna Haruspice

All journalism is advocacy. The only question is—for whom? Journalists can’t and will never serve as neutral "umpire". Truth is that in our 100 and 200 level media training we were taught that reporting involves being a neutral arbiter, reporting the "two sides of a story without judging". The concept of objectivity, fairness and balance were taught like articles of faith. 


But after 300 and 400 level in the university we come to realise the fallacy of that thinking. It is a thinking entrenched in normative ideal — one that critical media studies deconstructed as theoretically flawed and practically unsustainable. Through critical epistemology, political economy, and ideological critique we come to understand the myth of neutrality and the umpire fallacy. 


It presupposes an Archimedean point outside ideology, power, and social relations—a fantasy long dismantled by scholars from Stuart Hall to Noam Chomsky. The very act of “selecting” which "two sides" to present (often a false binary) is itself an ideological intervention. Whose voices are amplified? Which structural conditions are naturalized as "common sense"? The journalist is never outside the storm; they are always already “in” the rain, shaped by institutional constraints, corporate ownership, and unconscious biases.  


The idea that a journalist must "confirm the rain" rather than report it—presumes a positivist empiricism that ignores how media constructs reality rather than merely reflecting it. Critical media studies (which we were all taught in our second semester 300 level and first semester 400 level) by the erudite Professor of Mass Communication, Professor Sola Adeyanju, insists that journalism does not “discover” truth but “produces” it through framing, omission, and narrative. When journalists "confirm the rain," they are still making choices – whose rain? Which consequences? Which suffering is deemed newsworthy? The very decision to "verify" certain claims while ignoring others reveals journalism’s embeddedness in hegemony.  


Journalism and activism are not mutually exclusive, seeing them as such relies on an idealized separation between observer and participant—one that crumbles under scrutiny. Investigative journalism that exposes bad governance, corruption, or systemic rot in our budget process “is” inherently activist because it challenges dominant power structures. To suggest that journalism must not "judge" is to demand complicity with the status quo. As Gaye Tuchman’s “strategic ritual of objectivity” demonstrates, the pretense of neutrality often serves entrenched interests by refusing to name oppression.  


Engaging with ethnicity, religion, and politics are foundational to power struggle, especially in our society. They are not a "self-fulfilling venture". Why are these axes stigmatized while capitalist or nationalist frameworks are deemed "objective." Journalism that ignores these dimensions does not transcend bias—it enforces the dominant ideology by rendering structural violence invisible. Gramci explained this in detail in his hegemony theory.


The insistence on journalism as a detached, apolitical institution is itself a political project—one that safeguards power by disavowing its own role in maintaining it. The question is who benefits from the myth of objectivity? Whose silence is institutionalized as professionalism? Journalism does not escape ideology by claiming neutrality; it escapes accountability.  


©️ Kabiru Danladi Lawanti

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Arts and Humanities Students Still Need Mathematics

I remember my first encounter with numbers. It was interesting and because in Junior Secondary School, our mathematics teacher in JSS Akko made the subject come alive. He was patient, imaginative, and deeply human. He showed us that mathematics was not just about numbers, but it was about patterns, relationships, and reasoning. But by the time we moved to Senior Secondary School, the story changed. With poor teaching and growing fear, mathematics became a nightmare. We ran from the subject, we skipped classes and hated the teacher by implication hated the subject. That memory came back yesterday when the Federal Government announced that Mathematics will no longer be a compulsory subject for students in the arts and humanities seeking admission into Nigerian universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education. Many students will rejoice. But I am worried, because this decision quietly erodes something far more precious than numbers - our ability to think. Mathematics is not about fi...
Read more

June 12: Our New Democracy Day

Today is June 12, a date stamped in the memory of Nigeria’s democratic journey, not just as a calendar memorial, but as a symbol of what proponents of the day see as a day of deferred justice and recurring betrayal. I still recall my fierce argument in 1993, as a young student in Bauchi, with a close friend, an ardent supporter of Bashir Tofa and the National Republican Convention (NRC). I was aligned with the Social Democratic Party (SDP), drawn to the progressive promise of the leadership of the party and MKO Abiola, who we felt represented the ideals of the party. I was too young to vote, but I was politically conscious. We saw it not just as a matter of political affiliation, but a generational choice between the suffocating status quo and the faint stirrings of national rebirth. After Abiola’s victory, my friend told me bluntly “They won’t hand power to him.” I asked why. He had no logical answer, only a quiet certainty rooted in Nigeria’s political DNA. He was right. The June 12 ...
Read more

Professor Abubakar Roko and Nigeria’s Broken Promises

In 2017, some self-appointed prophets of the Nigerian economy the #AljanunKasuwa as we call them, declared or was it a prediction [?], that private universities would dominate higher education by 2022. They were wrong — not because public universities thrived, but because they collapsed differently. Their collapse was not from market competition, but under the crushing weight of elite indifference, broken leadership, and a state that no longer invests in its people. Today, the Nigerian public university is not just underfunded, but a symbolic of a much deeper national failure. The collapse of the social protection scheme if at all it existed. To be a worker in Nigeria is to live without guarantees. There is no reliable health insurance. Salaries come late — if at all they come, they last only a day and cannot cater for family needs. Pensions are a cruel joke. To teach, nurse, be a journalist, or even serve as a civil servant is to walk a tightrope between duty and destitution. We are ...
Read more