The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), has fined Arise TV, African Independent Television (AIT), and Channels Television N3million each.
The regulator accused the TV stations of airing unverified images of the alleged shooting of #EndSARS peaceful protesters.
Making the disclosure of the fine during a media parley, Prof Armstrong Idachaba, the acting Director-General of NBC, said if the commission escalates the violations that emanated from the misuse of social media sources by broadcasters, sanctions according to the provisions of the law, NBC can comfortably shut the stations down.
According to Idachaba, the stations’ offence was capable of leading to a breakdown of law and order but the option of the fine will serve as a warning to the stations and others.
His words: “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 emanation 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.”