Palaver of the Sikaman media and the future

WITH the advent of multi-party democracy, press freedom was born again. And soon after, Ghanaian journalists started speaking in tongues. Small groups of people, infected with the idea of a free press, got together and sought finance to produce newspapers.

The newspaper craze was also contagious and overnight, the newsstands became laden with newspapers of various sizes, colours, shades, emotions and, of course, notoriety.

Readers of newspapers became confused. With purchasing power constraints to consider, they didn’t know which papers to buy. Moreover, it was difficult to know immediately which papers were worth reading and which were mere garbage.

Soon, the sheep were separated from the goats. Some papers which got no saleable news and survived on lies and speculations were eventually boycotted. When they couldn’t break even, they quietly left the stands. Others were hopelessly sub-standard in content, language and layout. For some time, they survived on artificial respiration but lapsed into coma. Others simply disappeared after paying damages for libel.

Today, the fittest have survived, notable among them the Ghanaian Chronicle, Independent, Free Press, Ghana Palaver, Democrat, Public Agenda, Statesman, P & P and Insight. They are slugging it out on the stands and only time will tell which of them would survive the beginning of the next millennium.

On the electronic front, radio stations have come operating Frequency Modulation (FM) units. Short Wave (SW) being too expensive to venture into, the result is JOY 99.7 FM, GOLD, ATLANTIC, CHOICE FM and other private regional, town and cottage FM stations that dot various parts of the country.

These have brought about variety and jobs. So have the television stations. Ghana Television (GTV) is facing competition from TV3 and Metro TV. Competition brings about in efficiency, and for once we can all see that GTV is performing better after being divested of the monopoly it enjoyed.

Journalists who man the newspapers, radio and television stations together form the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), an association which, until recent years, existed only in name. It is now feverishly preparing to celebrate its Golden Jubilee, an occasion I believe will give more meaning to the Association and anchor it firmly for good as a closely-knit union of Ghanaian media practitioners.

PRINT MEDIA

Print journalism has really come a long way, plodding on like the proverbial snail, hoping to achieve the ultimate. It has had to contend with vicissitudes of fortunes as one political era succeeded another.

Of interest is also the fact that from the cut-and-paste method, press outfits now employ desktop publishing techniques with PageMaker components, making the job easy and speedy.  From for four-page newspapers we can now boast of are 30 pages and more, radio stations are on air 24 hours a day.

The development of the media is one thing people have taken note of, and in years to come, the fourth estate of the realm will be well-equipped to collect and dispense information more efficiently, more accurately, and more speedily.

There is another side to it. The media is likely to develop into a monster, the way it has developed to harass Lady Diana, the Princess of Wales, to her death; the way it has made Bill Clinton very uncomfortable by making a showpiece of his private sex life, and hundreds of others.

Indeed, until her death, the Princess had no privacy. She couldn’t sneeze without it being reported somewhere in a newspaper, complete with pictures in colour. At one stage, she lamented being a celebrity and asked the press to leave her alone to lead her life without world attention. She died while speeding away from pressmen who were furiously chasing her (and her boyfriend) on motorcycles.

If the press develops in Sikaman to the extent that it can in future drive someone to his or her death, cause heart attacks, and destroy families and leaders, can be tolerated as it has been in the United States and Europe?

Some of us think that becoming copycats of alien values and foreign systems is causing more harm than good to our society. For instance, it would be very unfortunate if the Ghanaian media developed to the negative extent that it can publish pictures nude girls as some British tabloids do.

The African culture is a decent one and should not be tainted with the wholesale acceptance of everything western.  In Europe there are magazines for homosexuals and lesbians, glorifying their acts and promoting their perverted ideals.

The homosexual culture is gradually seeping into African countries, Sikaman inclusive. Should we, therefore, expect to see a homosexual magazine on our newsstands one day?

If the European and American press can harass celebrities, presidents and top shots to the point of discomfort and even death, should the African press copy same if our culture is palpably different in form and orientation, history and tradition?

What I would like to see of a future Ghanaian media is a development-oriented press system seeking to promote the ideals of societal progress, economic growth, agricultural development, political unity, social cohesion and technological advancement.

And what I’d hate to see is the kind of media that is overly interested in wanting to know what the president eats for breakfast, which women he has spoken to of late, and when he is likely to sneeze without covering his nose with a handkerchief.

What I’d also hate to see is a media that seeks to play one tribe against the other, take to pornography or pry into the private lives of people not for any other purpose than to sell newspapers that only thrive on the obscene.

I’ve heard some editors say, “If you don’t write and insult Rawlings your paper won’t sell.” What kind of mentality is that?

The African press must develop, but it must do so in a positive way and not in the negative and destructive sense.

This article was first published on Saturday August 29, 1998