SOCIAL MEDIA IS TOOL TO IMPROVE JOURNALISM PRACTICE, EX-NUJ PRESIDENT
Former President of Nigeria Union of Journalists,NUJ, Lanre Ogundipe said the advent of social media is a challenge for journalists to improve on the profession by reaching to people at the best of time.
Ogundipe spoke as a discussant at the maiden public lecture of penpushing, a social media platform held at marquee events centre,Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, Abeokuta.
‘The advent of social media as tool is to compliment what traditional media are doing,but as it were now,many of us are under the fear that social media is another thing entirely. The social media has come to stay’, he said.
The NUJ leader,however,called on the practitioners to make sure,they get themselves acquintted with information at its best,just as he called on those in government to sit tight and avoid act to suppress information
‘Therefore for us as journalists, the advent of social media is for us to improve on what we’ve been doing,reaching people at best of time,get them informed,getting them educated and entertained,but when all these are missing,it pave way for rumouur mongering’,he stated.
‘All I will say to us is that social media should not be deployed to all comers affairs. Journalism is a noble profession,we should use those tools to develop,annex the potentials of Nigeria’,Ogundipe added.
The veteran journalist noted that the establishment of penpushing platform and performances in the last one year, was a new invention in journalism field,stating that it is now difficult for anybody to suppress information.
‘I must tell you that penpushing platform has flag off a new invention in journalism field, it is now difficult for anybody to suppress information. Penpushing also give every other professions a leverage to know that journalists are not busy body’,he said.
‘Because of penpushing platform,we have lawyers,engineers,doctors,politicians and host of other professionals and they give us more impetus to do our job. I see penpushing as a revival of what we are missing in investigative journalism’,he emphasised
‘We need to go a step further here,to make this platform more accessible to larger people. If you are a blogger come to that platform to learn more’,Ogundipe posited
