• Why keeping it real makes the job easier…
In an interview with Vanguard Allure, Kehinde Young-Harry, a veteran On-Air-Personality, famous for the feature programme “Newsline” on National Television Authority (NTA), she spoke about the trending broadcasters’ acts of faking accents like an Englishman.
According to her, the world of Journalism in Nigeria has become a venture for professionals and non-professionals. I n her word, “It has become an all-comers affair now. People are not specifically trained in what they are doing. Everybody thinks they have an idea of what they want to do or they think they have a flair for it.”
But even when you have an idea and you have flair, you still need the basic things like how to sit in front of a camera and how to speak. You are not supposed to sound like an Englishman. You have to sound Nigerian so that your audiences that are Nigerians can understand and relate to you. You don’t have to put up an accent before you are seen as a professional”, she said.
She further stated, “In our days, that wasn’t the case. You are proud to be who you are. Now, you hear all kinds of accents and because it is not their real accents, the underlining accent is still there; because, the person cannot pronounce the word correctly. There is a lot of that. I call them the DSTV generation. Everything that they watch on DSTV is right and good; nobody cares about anything.
In addition, she advised TV stations saying, “TV stations have to talk to presenters to play it down. I think people just make fools of themselves faking an accent that is not real and once in a while, they flip and the viewers notice. You can do a very good job, an exemplary job, being who you are; you don’t have to try to be someone else. Why is it that the British man is not trying to be a Nigerian and the American is not trying to be a Nigerian?
