By Austin Ogwuda
ON October 24, one of the leading Online platforms – The Pond, published by a former Editor of the Delta State-owned Pointer Newspapers, Julius Oweh came out with this piece, hereby, reproduced.
SIDE KICK: Govt Sleeping over Disgraceful Signpost
“The Cabinet Road is an important road in Asaba, the Delta State capital as it houses the office of the Head of Service, the office of Secretary to Government and Commissioners official quarters.
“Yet the signpost of this important road can’t be fixed or government officials believe it is not worth the effort.
“They are of the mindset that the contract for adding ‘b’ to the spelling of Cabinet would not attract huge amount of money.
“If the Commissioners and the Secretary to State Government are unable to see this disgrace, what of the Head of Service whose office is on the left hand side of the road?
“Dr. M. Oseji is more enamoured with dress code that bans coloured hair, false nails for women, wearing of beards by men and papa caps and resource control caps for men.
The Head of Service (HoS), Dr. M. Oseji
“The Pond News understands that this disgraceful signpost mocked the tenure of the former Head of Service, Mr Reginald Bayoko.
“But the burden is more on the current Head of Service because of her reform agenda.
“You can reform the civil servants by dressing well but you find it difficult to reform an obvious embarrassment to the government.
Something is really not adding up”.
Yesterday (Sunday) morning, as I was driving through that route for church service, the curiousity of this Reporter made me to turn my eyes but unfortunately, that signpost was yet to be fixed.
The question now is can the officers concerned including the Governor’s Media Aides pretend that they did not read the report.
Or are they coming up to describe the report as ‘politically- motivated’?
Haba!
Yvonne T. Chua in an article published by Oxford University Press, titled, ‘The Development Journalism Locked wrote:
The term “Development Journalism” is five decades old. But if the volume of academic research was the lone measure of its reach and impact, then one may erroneously conclude that this field of journalism has hardly had any reach and impact at all.
There is a paucity of scholarly studies for a genre that has proliferated across three continents and was once touted as the new journalism for Third World countries.
Existing literature points to two main patterns. One sees scholars pitted against each other on what development journalism is and ought to be. The reason: diverse, even opposing, variations of this genre of journalism have emerged according to social, political, economic, and cultural variations in a country or region.
The original ideals of development journalism, which requires independent, critical evaluation of the process of development, have been replaced by justifications for a state-controlled media in authoritarian states being passed off as development journalism. That explains the second pattern: studies tend to diverge rather than converge on the concept of development journalism.
Over the years, calls have been made to standardize the notion of development journalism or, failing that, to revamp the entire concept. Until that happens, scholars embarking on the study of development journalism need to bear in mind the different approaches and practices, and avoid cherry-picking components that will distort findings.
The approaches range from development journalists as willing partners of government (statist) to watchdogs (investigative) and from interventionist (participatory or emancipatory) to guardians of transparency. Within the range are more variants or combinations. The bright side is that there is agreement on some of the essentials for development journalism: emphasis on the process of development to bring about social change (communitarian).
Credit: The Pond/Oxford University Press
