Till the day God will wipe out all living things on earth, migration will not fade out in people’s memory and organisation’s dictionary. This is premised on the fact that human beings will always look for better environments for sustainable living and business transaction while organisations will find ways of managing inflow and outflow of movement.
As I was working on today’s research and writing activities, a colleague shared a link with me through WhatsApp and said, “Mutiu, Nigerian newspapers are becoming more irresponsible by the day.” Initially, I ignored the message because I taught the link was fake news, misinformation and disinformation we always discuss whenever we meet.
On a second thought, I opened it and found myself on the Facebook page of The Guardian newspaper, one of the most respected and reputable newspapers in Nigeria. On the page, I only read the snippet and looked a white man’s picture used as a featured picture by the newspaper. The piece is titled “Nigerians increasingly seeking second citizenship” and published on August 26, 2021 at exactly 1:13pm.
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With this headline, I expect a news story that informs us how Nigerians are migrating with the intent of gaining second citizenship through scholarship, job opportunities or asylum. Surprisingly, the newspaper exploited existing political challenges that compound socioeconomic problems many Nigerians are experiencing. In my view, the newspaper manipulated people’s mind towards clicking the link. In one of my forthcoming academic publications with colleagues in Russia, Nigeria and the United States of America, news stories like this are analysed and their implications discussed within the Nigerian project context.
Instead of constructing the headline using news headline construction practice, the newspaper should have let the audience know that the article is a promotional one not the types of news stories they have been reading about Nigerians’ movement to the global north and some part of the global south countries.
Nothing stops the editor for using SPONSORED OR PROMOTIONAL CONTENT before the main headline. The failure to prioritise this makes the news story micromotional rather than informational to the Nigerian audience. Micromotional in the sense that it aims at getting public attention wrongly using headline as a bait with the key intent of advancing strategic goals and objectives of the company being promoted. It is easy to argue that the piece will let political leaders address issues and challenges driving youths and adults, who have been fed up with the system, holistically. But, in my view, it is appropriate to explore responsible and solutions journalism practices.
