By: Emmanuel Oti Acheampong
The Director General of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, Professor Amin Alhassan has advocated for a high level of professionalism in the media practice in Ghana.
In his speech at the Public Lecture organized by the GJA to commemorate its 75th Anniversary, Professor Amin Alhassan reiterated the importance and relevance of Journalism to the development of every county of which Ghana is no exception.
The Director General of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, Prof. Amin Alhassan in his speech also made some emphatic statements about the relevance of Journalism both in the country and across the globe. He said “the importance of Journalism as an institution in our democracy can never be over emphasized because, it is what gave the country independence”.
According to him, the media practice has reached what he termed “crossroads” in its survival and this risk is posing a greater consequence on the type of Journalism in Ghana. He added that, to rescue journalism in the country, a lot of serious dialogue and conversations need to be had around it. He said, the model on which the historical journalism was built on, which afforded the Journalist the relevance to go out and bring the stories cannot survive in the next five years.
Professor Amin Alhassan bemoaned how the new model of production being led by technology, invests nothing in content production but rakes in more revenue through advertising and streams while the legacy media take less or little from the advertising market after investing heavily in content production.
On his stance on the Journalism profession and practice, Professor Amin Alhassan stressed that, the profession has experienced quite a number of proliferation in the country. He described those proliferating the profession as “jokers” who sit behind the consoles and microphones in radio stations
and pretend to practice Journalism.
He therefore reiterated the responsibility of the Ghana Journalism Association on the practice of Journalism as one that seeks to protect all members of the organization. He quizzed on the way forward in sanitizing the practice so that the ill practices of the few poorly paid journalists do not represent all Journalists.
According to him, these proliferation and portrayal of non professional Journalists as professionals is due to the rights to publishing enshrined in the constitution of our country. He said professional bodies like engineering, medicine, accounting and law can clearly define who practice unlike Journalism. This he described as one big hurdle the GJA will have to jump over in sanitizing the practice. With all these challenges, he still called on the GJA to sanitize the practice.
He further called on Journalists to acquire the current skill set needed for the modern day Journalism practice. He emphasized the importance of these modern skill set as one that will help Journalists and their practice in this digital era. He called on Journalism training institutes to make sure their students are trained and equipped with these skill sets to get them ready for the job market.
He urged the GJA to enforce such conversations around the digital skill sets of members of the profession in order to be digital ready for the future of journalism in the country.
