THE darkest page in Nigerian journalism was opened on July 14, 2014, with the publication by some never-do-well ignoramuses on the perpetually wobbly stable of a rag-sheet called Insider Weekly who indulged Abia State Commissioner for Information, Eze Chikamnayo, a notorious drunken womanizer and the worst information commissioner in Nigeria, with premium space for acerbic
descent on his master’s benefactor. Bizarrely, the brainless hacks behind it lionize themselves as populist “activists and fighters” in preposterous grandeur of self-delusion having gone underground in commercialization of falsehood that pitted them against the erstwhile ruling junta in the country.
There would be no
point amplifying the contents of the interview by responding to the
swipes in detail, except to make a terse summative statement on the
journalistic impropriety unsurprisingly activated by inside miscreants
who came outside! If Kalu is an “animal in human skin’’, Chikamnayo is a
monstrous beast living with HIV-AIDS going by his scandalous and
classless sexuality in Abia State—anything in skirt, including
hawkers—is game for the empty-head!
Personally, I ignore sniping by editors of Insider Weekly and their cancerous ilk because they congenitally lack substance and celebrate tissues of lies amid a poverty of wretched writing from a sub-literate aquaculture of recklessness and iniquitous bohemianism. But, if you allow such insanity to go on for too long, gullibility may nurture calumny to endure hence the need for this rebuttal in conjunctive clarification—even if it means dignifying feckless blokes who should ordinarily be disregarded. Periodically, the magazine exhumes a tirade and rehashes it with a new face to it in the name of interview exclusivity!
I have never read Insider Weekly or other caustic and impolitic publications like it because of the preciousness of my time which cannot be wasted. Last week, on the way to my daughter’s secondary school’s speech and prize-giving day to share in her glory as the Best Mathematics Student in her stream for the second consecutive year, a call came in from Umuahia to wit: a vicious cover story by Insider Weekly on His Excellency Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu (MON), former two-term governor of Abia State, a prime employer of labour and respected entrepreneur in global context. After the award ceremony, I went in search of the Lagos-based epileptic magazine. I combed all the major newsstands in Aba and none of them had a copy! In fact, an editor of a national newspaper I asked about the human capital in the organisation was doubtful if the trash still existed! I called the friend of mine in Umuahia to scan the pages concerning Kalu and send to me.
It is easy to understand why it was marginally circulated in the Abia State capital because of its poor print-run. In Umuahia there is a receding pool of Kalu-haters who in their bestiality will savour such salacious materials much more than the enlightened class of patrons in Lagos and Abuja who decipher between slanderous outputs packaged as products of investigative journalism and factual offerings. It is interesting that even the insignificant and negligible microcosm of Insider Weekly subscribers in Umuahia and its environs know malicious propaganda when they are assaulted with one that is writ large in its vacuity!
Until this descent to asininity, I never knew that professional charlatanism had been elevated to brazen illogicality enveloped in dysfunctional public communication as evidenced by the Insider clownishness surfeited in intemperate language culminating in rabid character mudslinging. Gorilla brand of journalism or its semblance is no longer in vogue. The era of Tempo journalism has been consigned to the archives as a distractive footnote in the revalidation of democracy in Nigeria. Even if you are famished and a politician or government operative approaches you to do a tendentious job of pouring invectives on his opponent, there should be some decorum, civility and responsibility amid the inevitability of bias. The target should be interrogated and given a fair chance to explicate his own side of the usually wild allegations and largely unsubstantiated, bogus claims. That is the essential condiment of balanced, dispassionate and objective journalism, especially in an environment still in developmental throes. Circumstantial hunger should not make a man to behave senselessly and boyishly!
My painstaking investigation into the evolution of Insider Weekly showed that it was jaundiced right from its accidental and greedy conception, as a splinter megaphone, to its impaired birth and stunted growth characterized by chronic debility. With this kind of fractured background, it is understandable why the magazine has stagnated since inception. For its blemished promoters who are susceptible to pricing, there is nothing like professional ethics or associational code of conduct. The mantra is freedom of speech as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution (as amended) which must be flagrantly abused in the exercise of the provision! Otherwise, how do you assail a man based on some fictitious documents and guttural fabrications without any interface with him or third-party intervention to confirm, deny or elucidate the cock-and-bull yarns and repetitive fables? No sane person is misled by headline screamers and cover pictures on trite publications that willfully trifle with people’s integrity, reputation and public perception without any qualms.
Nobody should be scandalized that the ill-mannered promoters of Insider Weekly and their commissioner-accomplice practise yellow journalism. Gutter philosophy is an integral aspect of their existential paradigm. They have nothing whatsoever to lose and are always ready to fight dirty. For me, the best way to handle these scrotal elements is to ignore them or clinically excise the buffoons—the summit probability inherence of self-affliction notwithstanding.
Why should quackery and indecorous presentation of opinions as facts by a myopic and infinitesimal section of the media be allowed to thrive in this country that is globally known as continental leaders in robust and fair journalism? It is unfortunate that regulatory, supervisory and professional bodies for the media have, inexplicably, been toothless in the face of unprofessionalism by media establishments like Insider Weekly which cannot meet basic salary obligations among other statutory and contractual requirements.
Insider Weekly had from inception been gasping for breath and its last straw for life has been oxygenated with the Kalu gist. A newsmaker any day, his picture alone adorning any magazine without any purported foibles hatched somewhere in Umuahia is an unbeatable commercial strategy, most especially for an endemic weekly battling with the certainty of extinction as a result of ectopic birth! Insider Weekly is so stunted and underdeveloped that only a few Nigerians and a handful of newspaper vendors nationwide know about its miserable existence, copious years after its deleterious concoction.
Publications that are flourishing distance themselves from crass irresponsibility, ludicrousness and insensitivity to people’s privacies and feelings. Such juvenility is confirmatory of the stuff the publication is made of and determines its abysmal trajectory, the quality and scope of patronage. Once the vision and mission are foundationally blurred, invocation of invectives and spluttering the same on distinguished members of the society become an occupational engagement and survivalist depravity.
Who does not know that the lifeblood of Insider Weekly is blackmail? If the kindergartners managing the magazine ask for perceptive advertisements from corporate bodies, public relational supplements from intimidated state governments and foreclosure money from moneybags and if there is ‘non-cooperation’, their prospective victim is left between the devil and the deep blue sea. Appeasement is the only solution! I remember my managerial days in corporate citizenship when one of the dwarfish directors of Insider Weekly came with snippets of alleged negative stories about infractions by the bank. One of our female deputy general managers panicked and requested for ‘settlement’! I professionally advised against it to no avail. The dunderhead was given N50,000 and he vamoosed and vanished pronto after shamelessly counting the money in the open office! Of course, that filthy, paltry gift marked the fatality of the story and saved the bank from unwarranted public embarrassment, odium and ridicule that could possibly have resulted in a run on the bank.
What is the difficulty practising mainstream or ethical journalism? For the celebrity (junk) genre, it is understandable because of tabloid traditions. But for a newsmagazine to indulge in brainless, antagonistic and adversarial information dissemination hallmarks improper upbringing which is demonstrative of unparalleled uncouthness and signposts duplicitous characterization. In the industry there is what is known as ‘junkalism’ (junk journalism), which is where Insider Weekly appropriately belongs.
The imbecilic Insider Weekly tale on Kalu borders on sheer idiocy. There is no other way I can rationalize such a brainwave. The society should exterminate such kwashiorkor-infested and myopic publications to save our countrymen from their odiousness. Parochialism and rascality can never take any magazine beyond its limiting confines because truth is constant and sacred. This is not the first or last time that the magazine will attempt to futilely diminish Kalu whose ever-rising profile is becoming worrisome ahead of 2015!
I cannot fathom this trivial publication that smacks of stupidity because there is no justificatory basis for it. Any standard news medium in the public domain must have core principles and values encapsulated in all its official statements shorn of sensationalism and farcical tendencies associated with the worst governor in the world. Venomous pages on personalities often indicate irrefutable mercantilism. Mercenaries in Insider Weekly and elsewhere are known for inveterate hatchet jobs. They make no implausible pretensions about their strong avowals on cash-and-carry journalism driven by irredeemable abject poverty.
As for the so-called commissioner who granted the noisome interview thoughtlessly and irreverently published by the fledgling weekly without any professionalism compunction, the nine ladies he impregnated in Abia State, where prostitution is now rife because of bad governance, are waiting for him!
Ndubuisi, a former editor, is an Aba-based businessman.
Personally, I ignore sniping by editors of Insider Weekly and their cancerous ilk because they congenitally lack substance and celebrate tissues of lies amid a poverty of wretched writing from a sub-literate aquaculture of recklessness and iniquitous bohemianism. But, if you allow such insanity to go on for too long, gullibility may nurture calumny to endure hence the need for this rebuttal in conjunctive clarification—even if it means dignifying feckless blokes who should ordinarily be disregarded. Periodically, the magazine exhumes a tirade and rehashes it with a new face to it in the name of interview exclusivity!
I have never read Insider Weekly or other caustic and impolitic publications like it because of the preciousness of my time which cannot be wasted. Last week, on the way to my daughter’s secondary school’s speech and prize-giving day to share in her glory as the Best Mathematics Student in her stream for the second consecutive year, a call came in from Umuahia to wit: a vicious cover story by Insider Weekly on His Excellency Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu (MON), former two-term governor of Abia State, a prime employer of labour and respected entrepreneur in global context. After the award ceremony, I went in search of the Lagos-based epileptic magazine. I combed all the major newsstands in Aba and none of them had a copy! In fact, an editor of a national newspaper I asked about the human capital in the organisation was doubtful if the trash still existed! I called the friend of mine in Umuahia to scan the pages concerning Kalu and send to me.
It is easy to understand why it was marginally circulated in the Abia State capital because of its poor print-run. In Umuahia there is a receding pool of Kalu-haters who in their bestiality will savour such salacious materials much more than the enlightened class of patrons in Lagos and Abuja who decipher between slanderous outputs packaged as products of investigative journalism and factual offerings. It is interesting that even the insignificant and negligible microcosm of Insider Weekly subscribers in Umuahia and its environs know malicious propaganda when they are assaulted with one that is writ large in its vacuity!
Until this descent to asininity, I never knew that professional charlatanism had been elevated to brazen illogicality enveloped in dysfunctional public communication as evidenced by the Insider clownishness surfeited in intemperate language culminating in rabid character mudslinging. Gorilla brand of journalism or its semblance is no longer in vogue. The era of Tempo journalism has been consigned to the archives as a distractive footnote in the revalidation of democracy in Nigeria. Even if you are famished and a politician or government operative approaches you to do a tendentious job of pouring invectives on his opponent, there should be some decorum, civility and responsibility amid the inevitability of bias. The target should be interrogated and given a fair chance to explicate his own side of the usually wild allegations and largely unsubstantiated, bogus claims. That is the essential condiment of balanced, dispassionate and objective journalism, especially in an environment still in developmental throes. Circumstantial hunger should not make a man to behave senselessly and boyishly!
My painstaking investigation into the evolution of Insider Weekly showed that it was jaundiced right from its accidental and greedy conception, as a splinter megaphone, to its impaired birth and stunted growth characterized by chronic debility. With this kind of fractured background, it is understandable why the magazine has stagnated since inception. For its blemished promoters who are susceptible to pricing, there is nothing like professional ethics or associational code of conduct. The mantra is freedom of speech as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution (as amended) which must be flagrantly abused in the exercise of the provision! Otherwise, how do you assail a man based on some fictitious documents and guttural fabrications without any interface with him or third-party intervention to confirm, deny or elucidate the cock-and-bull yarns and repetitive fables? No sane person is misled by headline screamers and cover pictures on trite publications that willfully trifle with people’s integrity, reputation and public perception without any qualms.
Nobody should be scandalized that the ill-mannered promoters of Insider Weekly and their commissioner-accomplice practise yellow journalism. Gutter philosophy is an integral aspect of their existential paradigm. They have nothing whatsoever to lose and are always ready to fight dirty. For me, the best way to handle these scrotal elements is to ignore them or clinically excise the buffoons—the summit probability inherence of self-affliction notwithstanding.
Why should quackery and indecorous presentation of opinions as facts by a myopic and infinitesimal section of the media be allowed to thrive in this country that is globally known as continental leaders in robust and fair journalism? It is unfortunate that regulatory, supervisory and professional bodies for the media have, inexplicably, been toothless in the face of unprofessionalism by media establishments like Insider Weekly which cannot meet basic salary obligations among other statutory and contractual requirements.
Insider Weekly had from inception been gasping for breath and its last straw for life has been oxygenated with the Kalu gist. A newsmaker any day, his picture alone adorning any magazine without any purported foibles hatched somewhere in Umuahia is an unbeatable commercial strategy, most especially for an endemic weekly battling with the certainty of extinction as a result of ectopic birth! Insider Weekly is so stunted and underdeveloped that only a few Nigerians and a handful of newspaper vendors nationwide know about its miserable existence, copious years after its deleterious concoction.
Publications that are flourishing distance themselves from crass irresponsibility, ludicrousness and insensitivity to people’s privacies and feelings. Such juvenility is confirmatory of the stuff the publication is made of and determines its abysmal trajectory, the quality and scope of patronage. Once the vision and mission are foundationally blurred, invocation of invectives and spluttering the same on distinguished members of the society become an occupational engagement and survivalist depravity.
Who does not know that the lifeblood of Insider Weekly is blackmail? If the kindergartners managing the magazine ask for perceptive advertisements from corporate bodies, public relational supplements from intimidated state governments and foreclosure money from moneybags and if there is ‘non-cooperation’, their prospective victim is left between the devil and the deep blue sea. Appeasement is the only solution! I remember my managerial days in corporate citizenship when one of the dwarfish directors of Insider Weekly came with snippets of alleged negative stories about infractions by the bank. One of our female deputy general managers panicked and requested for ‘settlement’! I professionally advised against it to no avail. The dunderhead was given N50,000 and he vamoosed and vanished pronto after shamelessly counting the money in the open office! Of course, that filthy, paltry gift marked the fatality of the story and saved the bank from unwarranted public embarrassment, odium and ridicule that could possibly have resulted in a run on the bank.
What is the difficulty practising mainstream or ethical journalism? For the celebrity (junk) genre, it is understandable because of tabloid traditions. But for a newsmagazine to indulge in brainless, antagonistic and adversarial information dissemination hallmarks improper upbringing which is demonstrative of unparalleled uncouthness and signposts duplicitous characterization. In the industry there is what is known as ‘junkalism’ (junk journalism), which is where Insider Weekly appropriately belongs.
The imbecilic Insider Weekly tale on Kalu borders on sheer idiocy. There is no other way I can rationalize such a brainwave. The society should exterminate such kwashiorkor-infested and myopic publications to save our countrymen from their odiousness. Parochialism and rascality can never take any magazine beyond its limiting confines because truth is constant and sacred. This is not the first or last time that the magazine will attempt to futilely diminish Kalu whose ever-rising profile is becoming worrisome ahead of 2015!
I cannot fathom this trivial publication that smacks of stupidity because there is no justificatory basis for it. Any standard news medium in the public domain must have core principles and values encapsulated in all its official statements shorn of sensationalism and farcical tendencies associated with the worst governor in the world. Venomous pages on personalities often indicate irrefutable mercantilism. Mercenaries in Insider Weekly and elsewhere are known for inveterate hatchet jobs. They make no implausible pretensions about their strong avowals on cash-and-carry journalism driven by irredeemable abject poverty.
As for the so-called commissioner who granted the noisome interview thoughtlessly and irreverently published by the fledgling weekly without any professionalism compunction, the nine ladies he impregnated in Abia State, where prostitution is now rife because of bad governance, are waiting for him!
Ndubuisi, a former editor, is an Aba-based businessman.
