To the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission, On the eve of Christmas, a bomb exploded in Borno State during Muslim prayers. Worshippers gathered...
To the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission,
On the eve of Christmas, a bomb exploded in Borno State during Muslim prayers. Worshippers gathered for salat were killed and injured. In a country already frayed by grief, this should have been reported with restraint, clarity, and care. Instead, a Channels TV chose a headline that read, “Bomb blast on Christmas Day.” The wording was not a neutral timestamp. It carried a suggestion. It nudged the inattentive reader toward a conclusion the facts did not support. It implied a sectarian target. It blurred victims into an imagined narrative. That is not journalism. It is an accelerant.
The outlet in question, Channels TV, has built a reputation on professionalism. That is precisely why this lapse matters. When a platform with reach and credibility misframes a tragedy, the error does not stay local. It travels. It settles into conversations at motor parks, on WhatsApp groups, at tea stalls. It hardens suspicion. It plants a lie that requires no proof to spread.
Words choose sides even when editors pretend they do not. “On Christmas Day” does not merely locate a date. In Nigeria’s charged religious landscape, it frames a motive. It invites readers to infer that Christians were targeted, or that Muslims were responsible, or both. None of that was established. The victims were Muslims at prayer. The attack was terror against Nigerians, full stop. To suggest otherwise is to trade accuracy for sensation.
Some will argue this is pedantry. It is not. Headlines are not footnotes. They are the most read line in any story. They set the moral weather. A careless headline can undo a careful report beneath it. Anyone who has worked a newsroom knows this. Editors agonise over headlines because they know what they do to minds.
Borno State has buried too many people for shortcuts. The state sits at the intersection of insurgency, counterinsurgency, displacement, and fatigue. Communities there live with sirens in their sleep. In such a place, the journalist’s first duty is precision. When precision fails, harm follows. A misleading headline becomes a rumour. A rumour becomes blame. Blame becomes retaliation. We have seen this chain before. It ends in funerals.
This is not about protecting Islam from scrutiny or Christianity from misrepresentation. It is about protecting truth from distortion. Terrorism feeds on confusion. So does hate. When the media supplies either or both, even unintentionally, it becomes part of the problem it claims to cover.
Let us be plain. There is no professional justification for a headline that foregrounds Christmas while obscuring Muslim victims. The choice was avoidable. “Bomb blast during prayers in Borno” would have sufficed. “Worshippers killed in Borno attack” would have been accurate. Editors have options. They chose the one that teased outrage.
The consequences are not abstract. Nigeria has a long memory of violence sparked by misreporting and rumor. From market panics to communal clashes, the pattern repeats. A phrase slips. A crowd reacts. Leaders plead for calm after the damage is done. Journalism that learns nothing from this history is not merely negligent. It is an accomplice.
The Broadcasting Code exists for a reason. It speaks to accuracy, fairness, and the avoidance of incitement. These are not decorative clauses. They are guardrails built with blood. When broadcasters lean over them for clicks or speed, the regulator must step in, not with theatre, but with seriousness.
This letter asks the Commission to do three things.
First, to investigate the editorial process that produced the headline. Not to scapegoat a junior staffer, but to understand how judgement failed at multiple points. Who approved the wording. What standards were consulted. Whether sensitivity checks exist for conflict reporting, and if they do, why they were bypassed.
Second, to require a public correction that does more than swap words. Corrections teach. They explain what went wrong and why it matters. A quiet edit hours later is not enough. The harm was public. The remedy should be too.
Third, to issue a sector wide reminder that dates and religious markers are not neutral in Nigeria. They are volatile. Broadcasters must treat them as such. This is not censorship. It is competence.
There will be pushback. Some will cry regulation. Others will invoke freedom of the press. Freedom is not freedom from responsibility. The press is free because society trusts it to act with care. When that trust is breached, accountability follows. That is the social contract.
A journalist’s craft is not only about uncovering facts. It is about arranging them so the public sees clearly. Clarity reduces fear. Fear is the currency of extremists. Every misleading headline is a crowd sourced donation to that economy.
I write this as someone who has watched communities turn on each other over less. As someone who has seen how quickly a phrase can become a weapon. Nigeria does not need more of that. It needs editors who pause, who ask what a word will do once it leaves the studio.
The victims in Borno deserved better. They deserved to be named as what they were. Nigerians at prayer. Killed by terror. Nothing about Christmas clarifies that. Everything about accuracy does.
The Commission’s response will signal what kind of media culture Nigeria intends to build. One that learns and corrects. Or one that shrugs and moves on. The difference matters. Not for regulators and broadcasters alone, but for the ordinary people who live with the consequences of what they publish.
If the press cannot be trusted to report death without planting suspicion, then it will have failed its most basic test. We should not accept that failure as normal.
Respectfully submitted.
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