The Federal Government on Tuesday said it was working on how to inject sanity into social media which it said was currently out of control.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, disclosed this at a press conference in Abuja.
Mohammed said no responsible government would sit back and allow such activities capable of setting the country on fire to continue unchecked.
“It has reached a level that the government may just no longer fold its arms and allow this to continue,” he said.
The minister also said no amount of attacks or criticism would stop the government from implementing the tougher sanctions for broadcast stations who breach the nation’s broadcast code especially as it concerns the dissemination of fake news as well as inciteful and divisive comments which were approved by President Muhammadu Buhari recently.
He assured stakeholders that responsible journalists have nothing to fear as the government’s intention is not to gag the media.
He said the intention of the government was to restore sanity to the nation’s airwave.
He continued: “Gentlemen, since we launched our reform of the broadcast industry, many Nigerians have reached out to us, demanding that we also look into how to sanitize the Social Media space. “I can assure you that we are also working on how to inject sanity into the Social Media space which, today, is totally out of control.
” No responsible government will sit by and allow fake news and hate speech to dominate its media space, because of the capacity of this menace to exploit our national fault lines to set us against each other and trigger a national conflagration.
“That is why we will continue to evolve ways to tackle fake news and hate speech until we
banish both.
“Therefore, Gentlemen, we once again seek your support for our efforts to banish fake news and hate speech from our media space.”
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, disclosed this at a press conference in Abuja.
Mohammed said no responsible government would sit back and allow such activities capable of setting the country on fire to continue unchecked.
“It has reached a level that the government may just no longer fold its arms and allow this to continue,” he said.
The minister also said no amount of attacks or criticism would stop the government from implementing the tougher sanctions for broadcast stations who breach the nation’s broadcast code especially as it concerns the dissemination of fake news as well as inciteful and divisive comments which were approved by President Muhammadu Buhari recently.
He assured stakeholders that responsible journalists have nothing to fear as the government’s intention is not to gag the media.
He said the intention of the government was to restore sanity to the nation’s airwave.
He continued: “Gentlemen, since we launched our reform of the broadcast industry, many Nigerians have reached out to us, demanding that we also look into how to sanitize the Social Media space. “I can assure you that we are also working on how to inject sanity into the Social Media space which, today, is totally out of control.
” No responsible government will sit by and allow fake news and hate speech to dominate its media space, because of the capacity of this menace to exploit our national fault lines to set us against each other and trigger a national conflagration.
“That is why we will continue to evolve ways to tackle fake news and hate speech until we
banish both.
“Therefore, Gentlemen, we once again seek your support for our efforts to banish fake news and hate speech from our media space.”
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