The public battle between Tonto Dikeh and Olakunle Churchill calls into question the role of the media in reporting domestic violence and marital issues.
The
last couple of months have seen the star actress and her ex-husband
throw and debunk accusations from each other. And all the celebrity
websites and news outlets including Pulse have covered every known
angle of their dispute.
However, on September 29, 2017, the Media
Room hub in a video released evidence provided by
Churchill that allegedly showed that Tonto was the abuser in the
relationship.
This video was released after Dikeh accused the owner
of the media platform Azuka Ogujiuba of collecting bride from her ex-husband and
skewering her interview with him to make the actress look bad. Just
before this, Ogujiuba said on a web series on Linda Ikeji TV she
felt the actress wasn’t being honest about what had ensued between
her and her husband.
Backstory
On February 24, 2017, Nollywood
actress Tonto Dikeh accused her husband of domestic violence - she
alleged she suffered physical and verbal abuse in her two year
marriage.
"It's very simple having a husband who cheats on a roll
and uses you for a punching bag and suffering gross verbal abuse," she shared in an Instagram post.
ALSO READ: Actress accuses husband
of domestic violence
She also said she got sexually transmitted diseases several times
in the past from him and finally decided to walk away after it
became too much.
“Nobody knows how many STDs I have treated or pain
I know in marriage. If laughter is all they have then the karma
that bites me awaits them all," the actress wrote.
Of course this
revelation was followed by a media circus - reporters and bloggers
scrolling through the social media pages of Tonto Dikeh and
Churchill’s to scrutinize pictures of them and picture captions.
There were invites from media houses looking for them to break
their silence on the issue live on their platforms. It didn’t help
that the couple granted interviews and leaked dirt about each other
to the media. People then started taking sides.
As their story
progressed, several things were made clear from both parties.
1. Tonto
wanted the world to know her marriage was not as rosy as she had
previously presented it in the past.
2. Churchill wanted his name
cleared as a wife beater.
3. Tonto was done with the marriage.
4. Churchill wanted access to his son.
With the motives from both
parties, they both presented evidence about the other. Their pain,
their marriage, and their dirt was just entertainment for some
people.
What exactly was the role of the media in all this?
Tonto
Dikeh - a 32 year-old actress with an acting career spanning 11
years known to both young and old is a person of interest. The
media not only reported on her career but also her private life and
most of what was covered was information that was made public.
Ogujiuba interviewed the actress about her marriage and the abuse. This was followed
up with an interview with Churchill; the other party involved in this drama.
Dikeh denies lying about the domestic
abuse and admits to destroying things in son’s father’s home.
play
Tonto Dikeh during the interview (YouTube/Media Room Hub )
Domestic violence against women is a social issue we’ve been
dealing with for a long time. What was once viewed as a tabooed
subject is now coming to the light with victims sharing their
stories with the press. The stories present by the media have
highlighted this issue and also affected how people think and react
to it.
With reporting the facts of the matter, it’s not the role of
the media to throw blame on the victim.
Does Tonto Dikeh really need
to prove to anyone she was in an abused marriage? True, she’s
alleged she was beaten and she showed us scars.
Let’s be clear now
- role of the journalist is to present facts and not play judge or
jury. If anyone feels their name (husband, wife or media outlet) has
been slandered or Dikeh is lying - they can actually take it to
court and file a defamation or libel suit to clear their name and
prove her statements as false.
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