NIGERIA'S KILLING FIELDS: AS REPORTED BY A UK JOURNALIST

"How many Muslims have you killed?"

That question sets the tone for a news feature in  ITV 4, conveniently titled 'Nigeria's Killing Fields,'  in order, in my opinion, to whet the interest of a British audience still obsessed with the idea of Africa being a dark, savage continent.

The reporter in this 'Unreported World' episode, Peter Oborne, turns an opportunity to shed light into the rampant sectarian violence, pitting Christians and Muslims in the Nigerian Plateau State capital, into a debased insight into the skirmishes, devoid of meaningful journalistic value.

He delights apparently in having a Muslim and Christian leader engage in a shouting match in front of the camera and at best just becomes a passive spectator instead of trying to put the Jos conflict into perspective, with a view to suggesting a way to resolve it.

The way the reporter seemingly gets carried away by the sickening thrill of highlighting the alleged evidence of the killings is simply appalling.

And on being told that 30 bodies of young children could have been thrown into a sewer, the celebrated journalist Peter Oborne, reports this as a matter of fact, without any further verification process.

The Channel 4 website claims their team uncovered, 'the truth about the convulsion of barbarism.' More like the barbarism of biased reportage if you ask me.

NUDITY IN A MEDICAL CONTEXT IN THE MEDIA: CAN THE EYE DIFFERENTIATE ?

You are unlikely to encounter unregulated nudity in the media. So what if a TV programme is deliberately designed to focus on health issues around private parts of the anatomy? Can the eye or mind of the viewer be trusted to remain within the confines of the medical context? 

Channel 4's Embarrassing Bodies series, on the face of it, can be said to be playing a useful role in encouraging people to seek medical help, even when the problem is located in intimate parts of their bodies.

Indeed, a patient visiting a gynaecologist should not have a problem baring it all in order to get proper diagnosis and treatment. Whether it's a male or female doctor is largely immaterial though preferences exist. 

That the producers manage to convince many patients to let their sessions to be recorded on camera and later broadcast to all and sundry, in itself is a testament of the noble intention to showcase why being shy about seeking treatment could be catastrophic.

But as a viewer of the programme, I am uncomfortable about following the conversation between the doctor and patient up to the examination room, where courtesy of the camera, I am accorded copious close ups of another person's nether regions.

I am also not exactly sure every male viewer will be looking at such explicit clips without straying into the terrain of impure thoughts, or for that matter, whether all the female viewers will be able to resist the urge to mentally do comparative analogies of the male anatomies on display.

Of course the objective here has nothing to do with exhibitionism but the subjective mind cannot be fully trusted to view the programme from a medical point of view.

So, editing out some scenes is prudent and would not erode the overall appreciation of the message, in my prudish opinion.

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