President of the Private Newspapers and Online News Publishers Association of Ghana (PRINPAG), Andrew Edwin Arthur, has revealed that some journalists in Ghana lack the skills to properly research into information they acquire before putting the news out.
He said this on Wednesday at a ceremony to officially inaugurate the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) of the 3rd African Media Convention (AMC) scheduled to be held in Accra in May 2024.
According to Lawyer Edwin Arthur, the lack of research is a major issue facing the media in Ghana on daily basis.
He compared Ghana’s media practice to some African countries he visited recently and said it reveals that while these countries receive high patronage in particularly newspapers and electronic media, Ghana only sees the opposite of this.
Touching on some of these problems, the president noted that the way some media practitioners are trained, how the profession is practiced without regard to the ethics, and the decision by some not to uphold any journalistic standards at all are among contributing factors to the canker the profession suffers.
He expressed hope in the impending convention saying that it would enable media practitioners the opportunity to interact with other practitioners from the African Continent and to also engage them particularly on what they are doing right that make them remain relevant in the scheme of things in their various countries.
Minister for Information, Hon Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, also expressed his pride to be a part of collaboration with the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), the National Media Commission (NMC), the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA), PRINPAG and other Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) associated with the media.
“It is our high level of collaboration that has led to the development of various interventions to our sector including Ghana’s Media Capacity Enhancement program which is currently ongoing at the UniMAC campus in Accra, the coordinated mechanism safety of journalist, the anti-misinformation and disinformation campaign,” he noted.
He said all these have been possible because they have been working together.
He explained that the AMC would go a long way to give African Journalism the opportunity to achieve similar goals to enable a wide growth of media in all African countries.
By Gertrude Edem Amuzu