The Media Blog: Abeg, Bola Tinubu should go and find several seats

Every now and again, people – including questionable characters who have not satisfactorily answered corruption allegations – mount a bully pulpit to accuse ‘the social media’ (a ridiculous term that speaks to a type or illiteracy) of being the cause of all the problems in the world.

It is an easy target, because with hundreds of thousands of blog within this border space alone, the target is wide. Every blog, including one with no sensible person behind it, can be called ‘social nmedia’. And even messages sent via whatsapp can be called ‘socail media’. An excuse for the obtuse to immediately condemn a thriving community of consumers and creators.

That’s why Bola Ahmed Tinubu, former Lagos governor and something-something of the All Progressives Congress writes a piece claiming to be a call to action for social media platforms to embrace nebulous higher stands but which is really a way to get back at ‘one Dr Taiyemiwo Ogunade’ for an interview he gave SaharaReporters about all these matters these old men spend their old age arguing about (and not to be flippant, the tragic murder of Dele Giwa is deeply important until it can be resolved, but not these guys using that death as cheap political trickery).

It’s about a week old, but the poor logic is still fresh as if it was written today.

This piece was not about social media, or about media at all, in the sense that media is a collective of creators disseminating information as a system.

It’s whoever ghostwrote this article (probably Sunday Dare, his erstwhile spokesperson, since the piece just happens to quote his wisdom) using the powerful Tinubu brand name to settle a petty score.

Why not just fight your fight and leave the matter of battering social media unnecessarily fully and well alone?

This is a minor pet peeve of ours. But it is a pet peeve nonetheless. If you want to be petty, be petty. Don’t drag a convenient boogeyman along for the ride.

And – uh – for that terrible Concord-style journalism of dumping a biblical quote at the top without elegance or thought.

Read the full, round-about-without-any-real-point piece here

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