Let me begin with a correction. In my last piece, I described John Swinton as the late chief of staff at The New York Times. He was, in fact, its chief editorial writer. I regret the error. But the correction offers an opportunity to revisit a passage widely attributed to Swinton, a 19th-century American journalist, about the price journalists pay for independence.
The passage, said to have been delivered at a New York Press Club dinner in 1883, contains a troubling admission: “There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press… There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.
“If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread.
“You know it, and I know it, and what folly is this to toast an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings, and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
There is, however, a problem with the quotation. Its precise origins remain disputed, and a reliable contemporary record confirming that Swinton delivered the speech exactly as it is commonly reproduced is difficult to establish. It would therefore be wrong to present the passage as an authenticated, verbatim speech without stronger evidence. Yet the question the much-quoted message raises remains relevant: how free is a press whose survival depends, in part, on people and interests it is supposed to scrutinise?
That question is particularly pertinent in Nigeria, where the press is regularly challenged by politicians, professional bodies and members of the public. Who gets the front page? Why does one candidate receive a prominent photograph while another is barely mentioned?
Whose account becomes the headline, and whose version of events is left out? These questions go beyond newsroom preferences. They concern the information available to citizens when they must make choices that shape their lives.
The recent disagreement between the Nigerian Guild of Editors and The Nation brings the issue into sharp focus. Beneath the exchange of accusations lies a question more consequential than the quarrel itself: who guards the guardians when the guardians become the subject of public scrutiny?
The dispute began with The Nation’s editorial of 8 October, titled, “Journalists Failed Journalism.” The newspaper criticised the NGE over the appearance of Peter Obi and Pat Utomi at its 22nd All Nigeria Editors Conference in Enugu, raising questions about the professional implications of providing a platform for political figures.
The Guild, through its president, Eze Anaba, and general secretary, Onuoha Ukeh, rejected the suggestion that the conference had been compromised by partisan considerations. It said representatives of the APC, ADC and NDC had also been invited, and that reminders and follow-up efforts had been made to secure their participation.
The Guild’s response was forceful. It accused The Nation’s editorial board of failing journalism by reaching a sweeping conclusion without establishing all the facts. Its defence rested on a straightforward principle: political actors should be heard without fear or favour, and giving them an opportunity to speak does not automatically amount to partisanship.
There is merit in that argument. An editors’ conference is not a political rally, and the presence of a politician at such an event does not, by itself, establish that the organisers have become partisan. Journalism must be able to hear from those seeking power without becoming their instrument.
But the Guild’s argument does not end the matter. A professional body cannot demand scrutiny of politicians and public institutions while expecting its own decisions to remain beyond examination. It should be prepared to explain whom it invited, what it hoped to achieve and how it ensured that its proceedings remained open to different political perspectives. Equally, if The Nation believed that the conference was partisan, it had a duty to establish that claim with evidence rather than insinuation.
Neither a newspaper’s editorial authority nor a professional association’s standing is a substitute for proof. The proper question is not who can issue the sharpest rebuttal, but whose account withstands examination.
The ownership of The Nation also forms part of the public conversation. The newspaper is widely associated with President Bola Tinubu, and that political proximity makes questions about its editorial independence legitimate. But ownership, in itself, does not prove that every editorial position is dictated by a political interest. It is a reason to ask questions, not a verdict on the answers. The same standard must apply to the Guild: neither political suspicion nor professional reputation should determine the outcome before the facts are examined.
This is where the current disagreement connects with a larger question that has occupied me for years: how well do Nigerian newspapers perform their democratic responsibilities?
I engaged with the 2023 presidential election campaign, and my forthcoming book, “Headlines, Deadlines and Storylines,” grows out of my doctoral research into how Nigerian newspapers covered and framed that election.
It examines not only what newspapers published, but also how they decided what mattered, whose voices received attention and how their editorial choices shaped the contest presented to readers.
Interviews with senior journalists and media leaders provide another perspective on the pressures, judgements and shortcomings that influenced election reporting.
One of the clearest lessons from the research is that publishing more stories does not necessarily mean informing the public better.
Sam Ende, a journalism scholar and head of the Department of Mass Communication at IBB University, Lapai (Niger State), described much of the campaign coverage as “a documentation of campaign outings and glorified press releases.”
His criticism was that too much reporting followed the movements and announcements of politicians without doing enough to examine their claims.
A candidate visits a market, addresses a crowd, promises jobs and attacks an opponent. The newspaper records the event, perhaps with a photograph and an arresting headline. The following day, another candidate performs much the same ritual. By the end of the campaign, the public may have a thick record of political activity without a clear understanding of what the candidates intend to do or whether they can deliver on their promises.
Dapo Olorunyomi, founder of Premium Times, made a related point. He described the election coverage as “excessive, persistent and perhaps even overwhelming.” Yet the volume of reporting did not, in his assessment, settle the question of quality. What mattered was whether journalists had held candidates accountable and connected their promises to evidence.
The two observations reinforce each other. Ende identifies the tendency to reproduce campaign activities and press releases; Olorunyomi asks what citizens actually gained from the resulting abundance of stories. Together, they expose a weakness in political reporting: the confusion of activity with accountability.
A candidate promises millions of jobs. What economic plan supports the promise? A party vows to end insecurity. What practical measures does it propose? A politician speaks about poverty, corruption or national unity. What do the records of the politician and the party reveal about those issues? These are the questions that separate a report of what a candidate said from journalism that helps citizens decide whether the claim deserves their confidence.
Olorunyomi also drew attention to the scale of disinformation surrounding the election, describing it as an occasion with “the greatest incidence of fake news” in our lifetime. His concern was that false and misleading information had become so prominent that it threatened serious discussion of democracy, its achievements and its failures. The implications deserve closer examination, but the immediate lesson is clear: when political noise overwhelms evidence, the public interest suffers.
The shortcomings were not limited to the quality of individual reports. They also concerned which parts of the country and which groups of citizens received attention.
Azubuike Ishiekwene, editor-in-chief of Leadership, acknowledged the scale of the work involved in covering the election but noted that “some things suffered, especially towards the end. State and local news suffered.” His observation points to a familiar problem in national political reporting. The presidential contest can consume so much newsroom attention that the concerns of states, local communities and ordinary voters are pushed to the margins.
A national election is not experienced in the same way everywhere. The consequences of economic policies, insecurity, unemployment, naira redesign, and public spending are felt in particular communities. A report that concentrates on the movements of presidential candidates but neglects those communities leaves an important part of the democratic story untold.
There is another dimension to this gap. Women, young people, rural residents, persons with disabilities and other underrepresented groups may be mentioned in campaign speeches without being heard directly in news reports. Their experiences become talking points for politicians rather than accounts of citizens whose needs should inform public debate.
Onuoha Ukeh, speaking about Daily Sun’s approach, acknowledged the need for better representation of women, rural communities, vulnerable groups and persons with disabilities. His observation complements Ishiekwene’s: one identifies the neglect of state and local news, while the other draws attention to the people who can disappear even within the stories that are published. The problem is both geographical and human. The press can overlook entire communities, and it can report national events while leaving important groups of citizens largely unheard.
The treatment of smaller political parties reveals a similar pattern of exclusion. Nigeria had 18 presidential candidates in 2023, but the campaign was largely presented through a handful of familiar political figures. Sam Ende observed that the leading three or four candidates dominated coverage, leaving others in the background. My analysis of lead stories in the newspapers examined also found that more than 75 per cent went to three political parties.
That finding matters because prominence is not a neutral matter. A story placed prominently on the front page is more likely to attract attention than one buried deep inside a newspaper. Repeated prominence can make a candidate appear central to the national contest, while limited coverage can make another seem politically insignificant. Over time, the pattern can influence not only what readers know, but also which candidates they consider worth knowing.
This is not an argument that all 18 candidates deserved identical space regardless of their public relevance. Newsrooms must make choices. Candidates differ in political experience, organisation, public support and capacity to influence the country’s direction. Editors cannot be expected to ignore those differences.
The question is how those choices are made. Is a candidate receiving attention because the candidate has something significant to say or because the party already dominates the political conversation? Is the newsroom responding to evidence of public interest, or simply following the familiar names that have always occupied the headlines?
Eze Anaba acknowledged the difficulty of giving smaller parties comparable visibility. “The rest would not get as much visibility… because even I do not know the names of those other parties and their candidates,” he said.
Joseph Adeyeye offered an account of the editorial thinking behind the hierarchy, explaining: “We strove to remain non-partisan and accorded balanced and fair treatment to each major candidate and political party.”
Both observations help explain how the hierarchy operates. Editors may believe they are being fair by giving comparable treatment to the candidates they regard as major contenders. Yet the word “major” itself raises a question: who decides which candidates qualify, and on what evidence?
If established political standing becomes the main reason for receiving coverage, smaller parties face a difficult circle. They are overlooked because they lack prominence, but they struggle to gain prominence because they are overlooked. The press may not intend to determine the outcome of an election, yet its choices can reinforce the advantages of those who already command public attention.
In my book, I describe this tension as “Disputed Duopolism.” The term captures the challenge to the old assumption that Nigerian presidential politics could be understood mainly through the contest between the APC (or its legacy parties) and PDP, particularly after the LP emerged as a formidable presence in the 2023 election. Yet the widening of the political field did not automatically produce equal visibility for all the candidates.
The broader point is simpler than the terminology might suggest. A country can have many candidates on the ballot while its newspapers repeatedly present the election as a contest among only a few. Political competition may be wide in law but narrow in the public imagination.
The answer is not to abandon editorial judgement or to pretend that every candidate commands equal public interest. It is to make the grounds for selection defensible, consistent and open to scrutiny. A newspaper should be able to explain why a story deserves prominence, just as it should be willing to reconsider a routine that repeatedly leaves the same voices unheard.
The front page is more than a display of the day’s events. It is a declaration of what a newspaper considers important. When the same candidates occupy that space day after day, their prominence can begin to look like a natural fact of politics rather than the result of repeated editorial choices.
That is why the question of press independence cannot be settled by declarations of professional integrity alone. It must also be examined through the stories newspapers choose, the claims they investigate, the voices they include and the citizens they leave waiting to be heard.
The next instalment will examine the pressures that can further narrow this field of vision, including ownership, commercial interests and disinformation. For a press that claims to guard democracy, the challenge is not merely to publish the news, but to ensure that its choices do not quietly determine whose politics counts and whose does not.
To be continued…