United States of America based Nigerian academic, media scholar at Kennesaw State University, Georgia, Professor Farooq Kperogi has said Daily Trust a regional Nigerian Newspaper House is no longer a legitimate newspaper.
Prof Kperogi said this in a post published on his Facebook page after Daily Trust criticism of Punch Newspaper editorial titled, Buhar’s Lawlessness: Our Stand.
Kperogi in his post entitled, “An Example of Daily Trust’s Pro-Regime Guidelines for Columnists”.
He also disclosed that the management of Daily Trust periodically send guidelines sends to its columnists to protect Buhari and his government from my unceasing critical scrutiny.
He described the newspaper house action towards it columnists as offensively unprofessional infantilisation of accomplished professionals.
He said, “Expand the photos below to read an example of the childish “guidelines” Daily Trust management periodically sends to its columnists. Note that it never sent such guidelines (at least to me) when Obasanjo, Yar’adua, and Jonathan held sway.”
“It’s obvious that the writers of this memo (and others like it in my email inbox) have zero understanding of what a newspaper column means. There’s nowhere in the world that newspaper columnists are told how to write and how not to write, what to write about and what not to write about. That’s offensively unprofessional infantilization of accomplished professionals.”
Read also: Daily Trust unapologetically in bed with the Buhari regime – Farooq Kperogi
“The guidelines discourage “elegance of prose” and “heavy criticisms” and request columnists to not “use derogatory or abusive language which could irritate and provoke those you criticize in your pieces.” In his call to tell me my column had been stopped in late 2018, the Editor-in-Chief was frank enough to confess that those priceless gems of wisdom were directed at me and were meant to protect Buhari and his government from my unceasing critical scrutiny.”
“Each time I read the “guidelines,” I always felt like I was in kindergarten–or, more appropriately, that a kindergartner was teaching me a subject I had a PhD in. I frankly would have left on my own even if my column hadn’t been stopped. It became clear to me that Daily Trust was no longer a legitimate newspaper; it’s now a kindergarten, pro-regime propaganda house irrevocably committed to featherbedding Buhari’s monocracy.”
“The paper’s motto used to be “Trust is a burden.” Obviously, over time, the burden of trust became too ponderous for it to shoulder, so it dropped it like it’s hot. Now it wants every newspaper in Nigeria, including the Punch, to be like it: a servile, ignorant, unreflective, and uncritical comforter of fascism.”
