“Quick! Hide them all. Dey don they show oooo!” “So. How does that affect me?” “Do you want to end up dead in a ditch!” “But…” “Don’t but me. I said, hide them all. Everything! Your jewelry, phones, wrist watch. Everything!” In America, they are called SWAT, in Columbia - Special Operations Commandos. In Nigeria, they are referred to as SARS - Special Anti-Robbery Squad. SARS, created in 1992, is a special unit of the Nigerian Police responsible for handling crimes that involve robbery, theft and kidnapping. Unlike the American SWAT team, this special unit which isn't given uniforms upon recruitment, are dressed in everyday clothes and can be seen on the streets but are hard to identify. The unit formerly praised became a notorious organization feared by many. The unit created to bring criminals to book, became the instigators and kingpins of crime. “Between January 2017 and May 2020, Amnesty International recorded at least 82 cases of “torture, ill treatment and extra-judicial execution” by SARS Agents,” Teen Vogue. The movement originally began in 2017 as a campaign on Twitter with the hashtag EndSARS, however the protest, organised by the youths, wasn’t triggered until 4th October 2020 when “a video that showed a SARS officer shooting a young motorist in Ughelli, in Delta state, then pushing his body out of the car and driving off with the dead man’s Lexus SUV,” The Washington post.  While the protest began as a call to disband SARS, the protest has gradually turned to a fight against poor leadership and bad governance.

 

Biases! Biases! We all have biases, known and hidden. There’s a special kind of bias that is seen creeping into the human minds, slowly, it goes undetected, unknown until it affects our opinion of things. It is the bias that lies within news articles. This is special  because the news is meant to report what occured in an event but oftentimes not everything about an event is reported and only part of what is considered important is reported. It’s a little difficult to pick the biases in a single article, in order to discover the bias, the article needs to be compared with other articles. Three articles were picked, about the same event, but do they report the same thing? The first article is from CNN, the second is from BBC and the third is from Teen Vogue; written on October 15th and 12th about the EndSARS protest. All articles were written by Nigerian. 

 

The most important part of any publication is the title, headlines when referring to news articles. This is the first place to look for biases, it gives a glimpse of the message the author intended to send to the readers. Looking at the headline from CNN, ‘More Nigerian protests against police brutality as reforms fail to convince.’ and comparing that to the headline from Teen Vogue ‘EndSARS Movement is being defined by Nigerian Youth.’ The title from CNN might seem neutral at first but studying it a little more raises red flags. Picking out the words ‘Nigerian protests’ - CNN vs ‘Nigerian Youth,’ - Teen Vogue, notice that CNN suggests that the protest was made up of all Nigerians (the middle aged, teens, young adults and the elders) but this not the case and Teen Vogue contradicts this by explicitly stating that the protest is being defined by Nigeian Youth, this is the first red flag. Now compare ‘protest against police brutality’ CNN to ‘EndSARS Movement,’ Teen Vogue, these two phrases are fundamentally the same thing but they also differ. Notice that CNN simply stating ‘police brutality’ depicts the protest as being against the entire police force, failing to specify that the protest was against a distinct unit within the police force as encompassed in the phrase ‘EndSARS Movement’ used by Teen Vogue, this is the second red flag. While these differences might seem subtle, it could be interpreted differently by different readers. It is worth noting that the readers of both Teen Vogue and CNN are Americans and remembering that there was a series of  protests in America called The Black Lives Matter movement which began after the killing of George Floyd (25th May 2020) and it’s  a protest against police brutality and the racial injustice. The BLM protest has sprung similar protests in different parts of the world - London, Paris and Australia, to mention a few. Because of this, CNN using ‘NIgerian protest against police brutality’  might cause one to think that this is just another BLM movement, which undermines the entirety of the whole EndSARS protest and presents an inaccurate representation of the current situation in Nigeria. If the EndSARS movement happened a year after the BLM movement, this article might have been interpreted but it didn’t and leaving out this major difference between the two movements leads to the thought that EndSARS is an offspring of the BLM movement in a different part of the world.  CNN not specifying the age range of the protesters and that it is a protest against a special unit of the Nigerian police force are important information that were left out. It is sufficient to say the first bias has been detected.   

 

The headline from CNN is biased because of the vague manner in which the title was phrased, while Teen Vogue was more explicit and left no room to second guess what the protest is about and who it is against. Comparing the two headlines with the headline from BBC Abuja -  ‘End Sars protest: The young Nigerians who forced the president to back down.’ The first part - ‘End Sars protest’ which is almost identical to Teen Vogue ‘EndSARS Movement’ and differs greatly from ‘More Nigerians protest against police brutality,’ CNN and further strengthens the bias detected earlier. The major difference between Teen Vogue and BCC Abuja is the part proceeding that. Focusing first on the connotation of  ‘The young Nigerians who forced the president to back down’. This phrase gives a pictorial presentation of a group of young people who refused to bear the hardship inflicted by the president and finally stood up to fight against the regime and succeeded in forcing the president to retreat. BBC Abuja’s ‘The young Nigerians’ and Teen Vogue’s ‘defined by Nigerian youth’  highlights the fact that the protest consisted of only young people, however BBC Abuja goes a step further to present another twist to the story that might not be obvious to people outside Nigeria. This difference is because the two articles choose to focus on similar yet different things. Teen Vogue focuses on the protest in of itself, that is what the protest is about, the reason it began and why it’s against SARS and not the police as a whole, using quotes by protesters to echo this. While BBC Abuja focuses on the hidden motives behind the protest, stating that although the protest started out as being against SARS has since metamorphosized to a protest against poor governance, driving the point that the government is the root cause of the brutality inflicted by SARS. If a young Nigerian was asked to explain the protest to a foreigner it will follow a similar pattern to the article from BBC Abuja. It might seem at first that the reason for this difference is because Teen Vogue is situated in America and BBC Abuja is in Nigeria but that isn’t the case. Because both the authors of Teen Vogue and BBC Abuja are Nigerians, so that leaves out the question of the author not fully understanding the protest. The two articles present similar  but different lenses to which the protest can be viewed. Having looked at the three topics from the three different sources, the headline from CNN is the most biased and the headline from Teen Vogue showcases the resilience of the youth while the headline from BBC Abuja presents the underlying frustration of the youth against the government's handling of the country and how they channeled this frustration to force the government to back down. 

 

In any reported event, there are keywords or phrases that explain how significant the event is. And in terms of protests, it is the number of people that were involved and the locations the protesters gathered. The words or phrases the article chooses to describe this is important because it can affect the overall perspectives of the article and this is another area where bias can be detected. In the EndSARS protest it is how global the protest was. BBC Abuja uses the word ‘widespread’, although this word can have a lot of meaning, the ambiguity of the word doesn’t bring the immediate thought that the protest also occurred outside the terrains of the country. And not specifying how widespread the protest was, can be misinterpreted as the protest occurring only in the cities within Nigeria. CNN uses a similar word to describe the protest ‘nationwide’ but removes ambiguity and states that the protest happened only within the confines of the country, immediately preventing the thought that it happened outside the borders of Nigeria. However, further down in the article, this was further restricted with ‘hundred gathered on Wednesday in the capital Abuja and megacities Lagos and Warri.’ This phrase underplays the prevalence of the protest and is a major bias that can’t be overlooked because it failed to mention the fact that the protest occurred in other major cities in Nigeria and not just Abuja, Lagos and Warri.  Teen Vogue uses the phrase ‘every major city in Nigeria as well as, Toronto, New York, Pretoria, South Africa, London, Berlin and Geneva among others,’ even though it doesn’t list every country the protest occurred in, it pushes the ambiguity of the word ‘widespread’ or ‘nationwide’ and also informs the reader that EndSARS protest didn’t just happen within the country but it spread to other countries where Nigerians reside. Underplaying or not specifying how global the protest is doesn’t allow readers to know how deeply affected Nigerians are by the EndSARS protest, whether they are within the country or outside Nigeria. The most biased description is CNN because it downplays how many cities were involved in the protest within Nigeria, BCC Abuja is the second because of the ambiguity of the word used to describe how places the protest happened and Teen Vogue accurately portrays this.

 

Each article used a different tone and presented the protest in different perspectives. CNN carries the vague tone throughout the articles, while the article focused on only what happened on Tuesday (14th) and Wednesday(15th) of October, 2020, it doesn’t give a gloss over the backstory of SARS. This phrase “The Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a police unit that demonstrators have long accused of beatings, killings and extortion, was officially disbanded on Sunday.”  was the only backstory provided and it isn’t sufficient when the audience aren’t from Nigeria and have no idea who SARS and  the current situation in Nigeria. It seems like the reason the article is vague it written by a journalist from CNN because immediately after the headline, a clip of the protest reported by news anchor Rosemary Church and journalist Stephanie Busari was attached, and this clip wasn’t vague or generic in any sense because it showed the frustration and anguish of the youths and also included an interview with one of the protestors, basically everything lacking in the article. The video clip might make up for the shortcomes of the article but the fact is, the article, the written words,  lacks details. While CNN was vague, BBC Abuja was both expository, it was an informative article about SARS, the protest and the incentive of the government in the protest and uses videos, photos and interviews to further drive home the point. However,  even though the article was expository, it was also persuasive, the play of words and the vivid manner the author described some scenes places the reader in the shoes of the protest; the emotions, feelings and frustration of the protesters was the resonating tone in the article.  Analyzing this phrase ‘On the streets, those marching are mostly comfortably-off young people, some with dyed hair, pierced noses and tattooed bodies. It is the sort of gathering that security personnel are quick to label criminals, but in truth, these are largely hard-working young people who have mostly had to fend for themselves without support from the state.’ Notice the way the second sentence starts by introducing the prejudice the security personnel has towards the protesters whom the article describes as  ‘comfortably-off young people‘ and how it transitions from the personnel’s labelling them as criminals, to stating that they really are hard working young people and most importantly the silent dig at the government ‘without support from the state’- basically stating it failed at its basic responsibility of serving the nation by not supporting the youth. This is the common theme throughout the entire article, the author paints a story of how wrongly the youths are judged and treated, and because of the poor leadership of the country, they ventured out to support themselves, only to be brutally beaten and humiliated by the same people that forced them to go off on their own and had initially promised to protect and give them better lives. Because of this, the article seeks to persuade the reader that the officials have truly been unfair and the protest was the right move to voice their frustration because of the injustice inflicted on them. While BBC Abuja was both expository and persuasive, Teen Vogue leaned only towards the expository side. It was informative and also contained more interviews than BBC and CNN. This is important it shows how different the tones of the article is, BBC seemed to appeal to the emotional side of the readers by showing how unjustly the youth were treated by both the government and SARS and Teen Vogue appeals more to the logical side of the readers by using and explaining interviews to show why the protest was the logical step to take when silent was no longer an option.   While both Teen Vogue and BBC Abuja showed the protest through the protesters point of view, the manner in which the articles chose to express this differs, BBC using imagery and Teen Vogue using Interviews. It also goes to show how different the readers will feel after reading all three articles. A person might leave feeling optimistic after reading Teen Vogue, indifferent after reading CNN and a series of emotions ranging from sadness to anger to pride while reading BBC.

 

In conclusion, the most biased article was from CNN because it leaves out too much  information, the article could easily be misinterpreted. Since the news is meant to be informative  about the event they wish to report, the lack of a good backstory doesn’t take into account how little the readers (Americas) know about Nigeria and the need of an extensive cover of SARS and the motive of the protest.  The article from Teen Vogue was accurate in its own vias because it chooses to focus on the protest itself, it wasn’t biased because it kept in mind how little the readers (Americans) knew of the protest and the current happenings in Nigeria and provided an introduction that won’t leave the readers confused or indifferent towards the movement. It’s not quite right to conclude that the article from BBC was overall biased, it had a little bias when describing how global the protest was, but it was clear the author has their reservations towards SARS and the government and there was a not- so-obvious criticism towards the government handling of the nation. It portrayed the real frustration the protesters felt because it used imagery to show how the protesters point of view. This is important because BBC Abuja was specifically written by a Nigerian to the international community to show what led to sudden protest in Nigeria. It was also worth mentioning that all three articles were written by Nigerians, so there wasn’t any excuse for not fully understanding the pain and fear the brutality inflicted by SARS has caused. This shows that any bias detected in this article was intentional and conscious. After analyzing all three articles, it is sufficient to say no matter how accurate a news report is, there are still biases that will be detected and information that will be left out and it is important to rely on only one news source because a person won’t be able to detect the real truth until it is compared to other sources.

 

ARTICLES ANALYZED 

1. Reuters (Temilade Adelaja, Alexis Akwagyiram) - More Nigerian Protest Against Police Brutality As Reforms Fail To Convince 

2. Tife Sanusi. End Sars Protest: The young Nigerians Who Forced The President To Back Down 

3. Nduka Orjinmo. The #EndSARS Movement is Being Defined By Nigerian Youth 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Abosede George. The Root of The #EndSARS Protest In Nigeria 

2. Wikipedia. Special Anti-Robbery Squad.