Speaking on Arise TV on Wednesday, November 11, 2020, the acting Director-General of the commission, Armstrong Idachaba said the stations aired fake videos during the protests.

Recall that in October, the NBC accused Arise TV, Channels TV and African Independent Television (AIT) of airing “unverified images of alleged shooting” during the crisis.

The NBC further sanctioned the three TV stations for ‘unprofessional coverage’ of the protests. 

Speaking on this on Wednesday, Idachaba justified the commission’s decision, saying “the onus is on the broadcaster to verify, not on the regulator.”

He said, “We had to impose a sanction because we found out that in the coverage of the #EndSARS campaign that many broadcasters began to be reckless in the coverage of the crisis.

“You are the one that owns the platform, you are the disseminator of information. The ethical burden is on you to ensure that before you churn out, you do your check.

“Rather than come up with facts of the issues, we began to see deliberate distortions, manipulated storylines, fake infusions and intrusions into the narrative, graphic presentations that rather than help to reduce the situation more or less aggravated.

“We saw spurious claims, misrepresentation of facts and these are in clear violation of the provision of the broadcasting code. We began to wonder at that time whether broadcasters have totally abdicated their ethical requirements.”

Idachaba also said traditional broadcasters are getting drawn into the lack of professionalism of user-generated journalists, adding that some of the people they claimed died during the #EndSARS protests have come out to say they are alive.