Our Editorial Values

Introduction

OSAZUWAAKONEDO LIMITED specifies OsazuwaAkonedo’s Mission as a news media to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain.

OSAZUWAAKONEDO LIMITED specifies OsazuwaAkonedo’s Mission as a news media to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain.

It is also established to work independently from government, and our action guarantee our editorial and artistic freedom and safeguard and promote press freedom in line with the unique funding arrangement which enables OsazuwaAkonedo to pursue a distinctive mission.

Our Focus is:

To provide impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them.

To support learning for people of all ages.

To show the most creative, innovative, highest quality and distinctive output and services most especially in the online media businesses.

To reflect, represent and serve the diverse communities in all the states in Nigeria and Africa and, in doing so, support the creative economy across Nigeria and the entire Africa continent.

To reflect the Bini Kingdom, its culture and values to the world.

OSAZUWAAKONEDO LIMITED establishes that it is a duty of OsazuwaAkonedo Editorial Board to set the standards for OsazuwaAkonedo’s editorial and creative output and services.

OsazuwaAkonedo must publish, review periodically and ensure the observance of guidelines designed to secure appropriate editorial standards for our online Services and safeguard the editorial integrity and high quality of our contents in line with international best practices and procedures.

Producing and upholding these Editorial Guidelines fulfils those requirements; making our content up to the standards in them is an obligation on all of us, led by the Managing Director, as the OsazuwaAkonedo’s editor-in-chief.

Our editorial values

Our audiences trust us and they expect us to adhere to the highest editorial standards.

We have a right to freedom of expression, included in the 1999 Nigeria constitution and also as stated under the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998. This freedom is at the heart of OsazuwaAkonedo’s independence.

Our audiences have a right to receive creative material, information and ideas without interference.

But our audiences also expect us to balance our right to freedom of expression as a core responsibility to our audiences and to our contributors, subject to restrictions in law.

We operate in the public interest – reporting stories of significance to our audiences and holding power to account.

We seek to establish the truth and use the highest reporting standards to provide coverage that is fair and accurate.

Our specialist expertise provides professional judgement and clear analysis.

We are impartial, seeking to reflect the views and experiences of our audiences – so that our output as a whole includes a breadth and diversity of opinion and no significant strand of thought is under-represented or omitted.

We are independent of outside interests and arrangements that could compromise our editorial integrity.

Our editorial standards do not require absolute neutrality on every issue or detachment from fundamental democratic principles.

Free speech enables the exchange of information and ideas without state interference.

It helps to inform public debate – encouraging us to be curious, engaged and critical.

It allows, for example, dramatists, satirists and comedians to comment on the world around us.

However, freedom of expression is not an absolute right – it carries duties and responsibilities and is also subject to legal restrictions and limits.

In exercising freedom of expression, we must offer appropriate protection to vulnerable groups and avoid causing unjustifiable offence.

We must also respect people’s privacy – only putting private information into the public domain where the public interest outweighs an individual’s legitimate expectation of privacy.

We have a particular responsibility towards children and young people and must preserve their right to speak out and be heard. Where they contribute to or feature in our output, we must take due care to ensure that their dignity and their physical and emotional welfare are protected.

As members of our audiences, they have a right to access information and ideas; however, we must ensure that content that might be unsuitable for them is scheduled appropriately.

The public interest

OsazuwaAkonedo’s Mission specifies that we must ‘act in the public interest’. It is in the public interest to fulfil our mission to produce output to inform, educate and entertain.

There is no single definition of public interest, but it includes freedom of expression; providing information that assists people to better comprehend or make decisions on matters of public importance; preventing people being misled by the statements or actions of individuals or organisations.

Complaints

We are open in acknowledging mistakes when they are made and want to learn from them. We encourage our audiences to send us email to register any complaint about our activities or contents to: ifo@osazuwaakonedo.news and issues responded to within 24 hours.

Accessibility

OsazuwaAkonedo is committed to being inclusive and accessible to all our audiences.