Media Monitoring

MPAC engages in monitoring of the Nigerian media and we provide feedback from the community on issues that affect us. We think of the media as a tool for positive change. We believe that we can impress the media and impact decisions on what gets covered, and how. If we don’t make an effort, we and other elements in our society will live with misinformation about our religion and issues affecting our community, and media organizations will think they are doing fine job. The objective is to promote free and accurate media coverage of issues affecting the Muslim community. We aim to achieve the objective simply by holding the media accountable to the basic tenets of journalism.

The first important task we are doing is to document concerns and trends among Muslims and the general media performance in the wider Nigerian society. Both positive and negative trends shall be monitored by studying the coverage and reportage pattern of Islamic or Muslim affairs- news and events within and outside our borders, and how the Nigerian media coverage of these fall within the global media trends towards Islam and Muslims. MPAC Media and Communications department will regularly engage in strategies to hold the media accountable to their own codes of practice and use performance measuring tools to appraise the Nigerian media to decide on the issues they cover well and those that need better coverage.

However, since media portrayals of Muslims have a great impact on public opinion and perception of Islam and all Muslims, MPAC believes this institution should contribute to cultivating an accurate and enriching understanding of Islam and Muslims by the general Nigerian public. Media professionals should rise above personal views and the lure to use individual actions as a brush to paint Islam and all Muslims; following basic principles of balance and fairness.

 

Ways to Seek Redress Against Publications that Violate Media Objectivity and Journalistic Ethical standards.

Nigerian Muslims share the same common values we all cherish as human beings: a deep respect for knowledge; a passion for justice; compassion toward the sick, elderly, needy and underprivileged; devotion to the values of family life, including respect for parents and elders; and acceptance of the “others” in our midst. MPAC cherishes the value of free expression and promotes the ideals of the right of sections of the society to be able to freely express itself.

Also, the MPAC encourages and values informed debates and discussion of religious issues in the media as a way to bring communities together, shine light on issues for common benefits as well as hold respectable discourse on where we agree and disagree in order to bring about better understanding of each other’s faith and its concepts. Any publication which incites hate, fear, or which spreads negative stereotyping about Islam or the Muslim section of the Nigerian population is morally wrong, because it negatively compromises or erodes the well-being of all members of that community. It is also both legally and professionally wrong. More>>>