EFFURUN/Nigeria: The media have been described as a powerful and important tool of influence that leaders can use to promote a brand that people can trust.
This was stated by Amb. Dr. Onyi Ikemefuna, at Centre LSD Leadership School, Effurun-Warri study centre on “Leadership and Media” at Heartland Hotel Effurun, Delta State.
Dr. Onyi affirmed that a true leader must be media literate by cultivating the ability to access, analyse, evaluate and produce communication in both print and electronic media, adding that a leader should at all times evaluate information by asking relevant questions to ascertain the truth before working on such Information.
She said that media literacy help leaders to develop an informed and critical understanding of the nature of mass media, the techniques used by them and the impact of those techniques, even as she maintained that it also helps leaders to provide opportunity to get input from the led, and the led to also feel listened to and heard.
Also speaking, the Chapel Pastor, Dayspring College, Pst. Ogaga Ossai, said that a leader should be able to manage communication effectively by knowing how and when to communicate rightly, adding that the absence of right information leads to assumption.
Pst. Ossai noted that for a leader to be effective, the habit of hardcopy reading must be highly cultivated, and not relying on soft copy reading alone, even as he maintained that information that has not been verified should not be disseminated. He disclosed that personal information shared on social media and other platforms are not press releases, and that press release usually involved the press, while newsmakers are people who embarked on events that are newsworthy.
