The Press & the Pursuit of Truth

By Femi Kusa
  
 [Full Text]
  
It gives me great pleasure, for several reasons, to be honored byyou to speak today on this subject. For not only do I belong to aprofession that is expected by all to unconditionally uphold truth and fair-play at all times, I also work on a newspaper, The Guardian, whose goal is to be the guardian of society. Under this newspaper’s masthead, is the inscription, “Conscience Nurtured By Truth” It is
adapted from the saying, “Conscience is an open wound… only Truth can heal it”, credited to Othman Dan Fodio, a great Islamic scholar who lived in northern Nigeria in the last century.
 
Our newspaper’s motto challenges us, always, to listen to that often-mentioned “little voice”, that inner or still voice, and to accord our actions with the Truth when we exercise editorial judgment. On this note, therefore, did I find myself on what appeared to be familiar ground when I had the privilege of contemplating the theme of this conference:

Journalism: The Truth and the 21st Century.
 
Beyond this, what does one make of the theme of this conference, JOURNALISM: THE TRUTH and the 21st CENTURY, or of the angle from which I am to examine it, namely THE PRESS AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR THE PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH?
 
Of journalism, I believe we are all familiar. It is, as you know, that field of human activity which distills and packages events in the human environment for those interested in knowing about them, and sometimes with the view to making them adopt certain attitudes. In a sense, therefore, journalism, apart from being an informer or informant, can be teacher, guide and guardian.

 
Of what constitutes the Truth, opinions are divided. Some people believe the Truth exists. Others believe everything is a matter of opinion, that human perception is selective and, therefore, relative.
This is natural and understandable, given individual differences. But aren’t opinions mere expressions of limited human understanding of life? In any case, which opinion is sacrosanct in the ever-expanding
frontiers of the knowledge of life? The same, I believe, goes for how different people will appreciate the concept of a 21st century.
 
In sorting out my thoughts on the theme of this conference, I could easily have entered into a strict journalistic discussion on how practitioners arrive at Truth, while collecting, interviewing, sifting, reporting, analyzing, interpreting, back- grounding and placing a story into proper perspective .I could also, within the ambit of this, highlight key concerns shared by many Third World journalists on how their societies are portrayed in the Western media by their relatively better opportune and more fortunate colleagues, and whether, in doing their job , Truth has been properly served.