I don’t know if TVC later realised its mistake and if it has followed up the broadcast with an apology. Other broadcast stations should learn from this and take precautions
By Uche Nworah, Ph.D
Broadcasters and broadcast organizations should adopt a policy of ‘once beaten twice shy’, when lifting content from social media. This is because the lines are now blurred between what is reality and what is augmented reality.
They should be more careful especially in an age when artificial intelligence (Ai), and other technologies heavily influence news and content production. With the democratization and monetization of content by Meta and other social media platforms, content creators are now pushing the boundaries in content production to attract increased follower-ship and viewership online.
The content policy should be a ‘buyer beware’ one, and such policies should be posted boldly at all news rooms and content creation/programmes rooms in broadcast stations.
With dwindling revenues, and content production now very expensive, not many broadcasters can afford to pay for original content. Most now resort to lifting content off the internet. They should conduct thorough checks on such content before re-broadcasting to their audience, to avoid re-broadcasting fake news or altered content known as deep fake.
It is important that they also lift content from trusted sources and news sites. Staff should be warned to desist from bringing unverified content, memes and other viral posts into the news room. This is to prevent such content from slipping into the daily broadcast schedule.
Nigerian broadcaster TVC made the mistake recently and broadcast skit by American -based skit-maker Daryl Vega. In the skit, the actor acted the part of an Olympic athlete who was abandoned at the airport by his country because he did not win any medal. TVC re-broadcasted the content believing it to be true. That’s very embarrassing to say the least.
I don’t know if TVC later realised its mistake and if it has followed up the broadcast with an apology. Other broadcast stations should learn from this and take precautions.
Increasingly, we are witnessing the production of such contents that push the boundary of reality. Such videos trend online attracting hundreds of millions of views. The content creators smile to the banks as a result. There is a female content creator that has been sharing series of trending family content of a supposed Igbo village where a woman is supposedly married to 5 husbands. Many believed the story to be true but the content was later exposed as a comedy skit. This is hoping that our traditional television stations will not re-broadcast such as reality.
Dr. Nworah was Managing Director/CEO of Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS).