Kojo Oppong Nkrumah
The Ministry of Information has organised a conference with development partners and the private sector on how to provide support for the media.
According to the Minister for Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, just like other estates of the realm that genuinely deserve investments to improve their quality of output, so too does the media require relevant, timely, sustained investment to improve the quality of its output.
The minister at the Development Partner’s Conference on Media Support Programmes in Accra yesterday said “Ghana has built for itself a robust culture of independent, free and fierce media practice since independence. Despite the occasional sporadic incidents of media attacks and the complains about media misreportage by various segments of the society, Ghana’s media landscape continues to generally be the toast and envy of many globally. But media practice has significant challenges.”
“In Ghana, though we are now nearing the completion of research work to collate empirically the most recent challenges of the media, a cursory analysis already highlights a number of challenges that must be urgently attended to. Wikipedia’s narrative about media in Ghana among other things says despite its relative freedom, the media in Ghana does face some challenges. Journalists in Ghana are often poorly paid, under resourced, and often lack training. As a result, journalists in Ghana find themselves susceptible to many undesirable practices affecting the quality and altruistic nature of the work they are believed to be doing,” he added.
To address some of these challenges, the ministry has established the Media Capacity and Enhancement Programme (MCEP) and the Coordinated Mechanism for the Safety of Journalists (CMSJ).
While the MCEP is designed to create a framework within which academia and practitioners develop and execute training programmes for practicing producers, journalists, and editors to enhance their capacity to deliver on their mandate, the CMSJ under the National Media Commission (NMC) is designed to continuously promote and ensure the maintenance of free robust environment for journalism.
This is in addition to the logistical and monetary supports government has made available to the media as a support mechanism to help them in their day-to-day administration.
The conference was organised by the Ministry of Information and was attended by the United States Ambassador to Ghana, Stephanie Sanders Sullivan; Chairperson of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Communications, Cynthia Morrison; Chairman of the NMC, Yaw Boadu Ayeboafo; President of the Ghana Journalists Association, Roland Affail Monney; Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), Sulemana Braimah; Rector of the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ), Prof. Kwamena Kwansah-Aidoo and Representatives from the UNDP, UNESCO, USAID, PRINPAG, GIBA and private sector players.
Outgoing President of the GJA, Roland Affail Monney, called on journalists to take advantage of the available capacity enhancement programmes to improve on their skill set so as to become relevant in the media space.