Television stations, Channels TV, African Independent Television (AIT) and Arise TV, were on Monday fined N9m by the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC).
NBC fined the three stations N3m each over what it called “unprofessional coverage,” of the #EndSARS protests and the crisis that trailed the incidents.
Acting Director General of NBC, Armstrong Idachaba, announced the sanctions at a press conference in Abuja on Monday.
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Recall that the #EndSARS protest, which had been going on for over two weeks, took a different dimension last week Tuesday when soldiers reportedly opened fire on peaceful protesters at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos.
The aftermath of the incident saw the wanton destruction of public and private property in Lagos State.
According to Idachaba, the sanctions will serve as deterrent to broadcasters who do not verify news stories before they broadcast.
He noted that the commission was concerned about the professional misdemeanours of some broadcasting stations in the past couple of days.
“In line with the provision of section 5.6.9 of the Nigeria Broadcasting Code which states that the broadcaster shall be held liable for any breach of the code emanating from the use of material from User Generated Sources, the commission, therefore, sanctioned Arise TV, Channels TV and AIT in line with the provision of the broadcasting code.
“Channels Television, Arise TV and AIT especially continued to transmit footages obtained from unverified and unauthenticated social media sources.
“No doubt, these pictures stimulated anger and heightened the violence that was witnessed during the #EndSARS crisis.
“If you escalate the violation that have emanated from the misuse of social media sources by broadcasting it will escalate the sanction.
“According to the provision of the law, we can comfortably shut them down because what they are doing is capable of breakdown of law and order.
“No responsible country will sit down and allow any form of media to bring down the country.
“Look at the level of damage and killings that happened on account of unverified news report.
“In line with the provision of the code section B which is heavy fine between N500, 000 to N5 million, we will communicate that to the affected stations depending on the magnitude of breaches.
“But none of them will pay less than N2 to N3 million and any further breach will led to the withdrawal of licence,’’ Idachaba said.
The acting DG cautioned broadcasters against airing materials that could embarrass individuals, organisations or cause disaffection, incite to panic or rift in the society.
“We believe that the whole country has now seen why the spurious and recklessness on the social media must not be patronised by the mainstream traditional media”, he added.
He used the medium to condemn the assault and intimidation of media houses.
He said the burning of TVC in Lagos and the brief closure of Channels TV, also in Lagos, were worrisome indicators of mob threat to the freedom of press.
Idachaba added that no country could grow when citizens muzzled and intimidated their press.