With less than a week before the Jubilee celebrations, the country is undergoing reflection—whether serious or not is a very moot point!—on the state of a number of things. The state of Ghanaian media is no exception. Now, let’s be – yet again – clear: I am no journalist; a few courses here and there have helped me appreciate the practice, but I don’t have a journalism degree to my name. What I do have are a few journalist friends/acquaintqnces who remind me that the proactiveness of the young journalists in this country is a great deal better than one would have expected.
Let’s take the case of the Stanbic Bank/ADB issue. The Sunday after I wrote that article, I contacted a journalist from the Business and Financial Times. I gave him what he has considered a "scoop" on the ADB/Stanbic story, which I am quite chuffed about. More importantly, though, was his tenacity, his questioning, his seeking of clarifications for the story, which turned out to be a front-page story like this:
This, within two days!!
I was more than impressed. As I was equally impressed to have heard that Bernard Avle, broadcast Journalist-cum-Economist of the private radio station, CITI FM 97.3, had had his show win the award for "NEW RADIO STATION of the year" and "TALK/INTERACTIVE SHOW of the year", for no less than BBC's Africa Radio Awards for West Africa!
I have spoken and interacted with Avle a number of times, and can say that he thoroughly deserves it! Full of humility on the evening of the win, in his response to the flagship CITI Eyewitness News, he praised the producers (Soloman Alhaji—sp?), among others of the show, and the number of unsung heroes who make the show possible. He told me he did a google search of his name—only to find his name featured in a number of entries yours truly had made about him!;-) It is good to know that it is something he appreciated.
Whatever the case may be, my view is that this is how the budding journalists in the country should be behaving...fifty years on!
2 comments:
Damn straight! Great to see that talent is being appreciated by people like the Beeb...good young journalists are so important to unveil all the dodgy backhand dealings that our governments/corporations get up to..and to give even the most ordinary of people a voice.
CitiFM looks very cool, but i don't think it was on air when I was last in Ghana..how does it compare to JoyFM for example?
And less than a week to go til the big 50...woot woot!! :D
Adam--great to see you; what's cooking?;-)
I re-call you say you left in 2003? CITI FM started in August 2004--the very month I landed on Ghanaian soil to work back home;-)
Let me put it this way: Joy's biggest competitor is indisputably CITI FM. The boss of CITI FM, Samuel Attah-Mensah, was one of the top dogs at Joy, before he moved to set up CITI in 2004.
A few former Joy FM people now work at CITI! All that said, it is a VERY serious competitor to most of the Accra-based radio stations--for the very fact that it is English speaking, and Avle's style (intelligible, intelligent, occasionally pedantic, seriously discerning) strikes a chord with the market.
For ardent Joy listeners, there is no station like Joy. For CITI FM listeners, I say, a lot of work still to be done, but no place like CITI!! Less puffy and very young-oriented without being puerile.
I hope you will be able to listen to CITI online (http://www.ghananewstoday.com). The latter is CITI's news website.
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