MY BEEF WITH GHANA JOURNALISTS...

MY BEEF WITH GHANA JOURNALISTS ASSOCIATION AWARDS

-Culled from Letter to Jomo by George Sydney Abugri

Sometimes young people send me mail asking how they could become good writers. I always tell them the truth: I don’t know. For those who express a desire to become professional journalists, I repeat the truth: Get the highest level of academic and professional training possible, and launch into responsible practice, with determination for a song and a constant prayer in the spirit.

I never fail to warn them that generally speaking, there is not much money to be made in journalism in developing countries and that anyone with a mind to harvesting wealth in the profession, is heading in the very opposite direction from where he should be going in pursuit of his goal.

All the same, Jomo, if this re-incarnation thing is true, I would be a journalist all over again my next life around: you get to travel the world. You can get into places inaccessible to other mortals. You get to meet people the guy from Kofi- Jack Street cannot easily meet. Being the ears and eyes of the people and the voice of the voiceless, you wield awesome power.

Then there is the novel experience of employing the peculiar language called journalese, to craft stories on a daily basis about your society and its people: their daily struggles, challenges, tragedies and occasional triumphs.

All over the world, journalism awards are society’s way of showing appreciation of the importance of the role of practitioners of one of the most controversial and sometimes very dangerous of professions.

That is why tomorrow night, journalists in Ghana who would normally have been covering weekend events, or snooping around turning stones all over the place to see what crawls out from under them by way of scandals, will not be reporting the news. They will be making the news for a change.

The Ghana Journalists Association Awards are probably the oldest awards for excellence in any profession in Ghana, but I daresay, the awards are progressively losing a touch of real essence:

At the awards ceremony tomorrow night, every award winner irrespective of award category gets a plague. I have made a modest collection of them (plagues) from the GJA Awards over the years, and found that one cannot put breakfast on the table. Each will also receive a certificate (same story here, Jomo) and a lap top computer (very handy machine for every reporter, but a thief could easily pinch it).

Now don’t go getting me all wrong, Jomo. Ingratitude is appalling. Journalists no doubt appreciate every pesewa sponsors contribute to the GJA Awards.

There is this argument that the essence of the awards lies in the honour and not the material value of prizes. My campaign is for balance between honour and the material professional needs of reporters in a developing country like ours.

During the recent national awards for workers of other sectors, Corporate Ghana handed out fully furnished mansions, sleek salon cars, pick-up trucks, tractors and hefty cheques to winners.

When I won my first journalism awards 20 years ago, I was presented with twenty (old) cedis and a palm-size transistor. As the years went by, it was suggested that Corporate Ghana could do better in sponsorship of the awards.

It was suggested that journalism awards should be of such a nature as to leave a lasting impression on all journalists, about the value society places on hard work, adherence to professional ethics and commitment to excellence.

So it came to pass that my colleague at the ‘Daily Graphic’, Albert Sam, drove away from a GJA award ceremony held at the State House one night, in a brand new car as his prize, after being adjudged the Journalist of the Year.

We did not recall any journalist ever having been presented with a car as a prize at the GJA Awards, so first thing in the morning after the awards night, Albert and I took his brand new Lada on a really big, two-man road show in Accra.

Finally, we parked the machine and surveyed her from a short distance. She did not exactly take the breath away, like the latest version of the Barracuda rolling out of an automobile assembly plant, but hey, it looked great, Jomo. No one had ever presented a reporter in Ghana with a car prize before, remember?

When it was my turn to receive the ultimate award a few years later, I thought the car prize would have been upgraded from a Lada to a Mercedes. For my prize however, I was presented with a somewhat unique package, which left me wondering whether or not I would have preferred a car prize instead.

My sponsors, UNILEVER and the British Council, contacted the BBC, six newspapers and three magazines in Britain and asked them to host me during a study tour and they all obliged. I was handed a return ticket, an itinerary and some pocket money.

When I arrived at Heathrow, a young Englishman in dark, smashing suit from UNILEVER Head Office, chauffeured me in a huge gleaming car with three side doors, to a most imposing hotel selected for me, off Oxford Street.

The cost of one night’s stay at the hotel was most prohibitive, and I realized after the third night, that I had spent enough to have built a respectable atakpame house. I called the British Council and told them I wanted to relocate to a bed-and-breakfast. A lady who had been assigned to coordinate my study tour sounded angry. “Then you will have to give back the money,” she shot back.

I decided to call her bluff. My pocket money had been made available by UNILEVER and not the British Council, see? I went to see the then London- domiciled, renowned Ghanaian journalist, Kwesi Gyan-Appenteng and he introduced me to a young Ghanaian couple in South- East London. The couple made available to me in their very plush, exquisitely furnished flat, a vast bedroom with a giant bed.

Armed with a detailed map of metropolitan London showing the location of the various media organizations, and my daily itinerary, I travelled independently, sometimes in the Tube and at other times by bus.

Some say that the tight-fisted posture of Corporate Ghana towards the GJA Awards calls for critical self-examination among journalists. We have been repeatedly accused of inaccuracy, unfairness, insensitivity, bad writing and editing, and arrogance. Some say we are too scandal-happy, approach every story we report with preconceived notions in spite of the available facts, have a questionable sense of judgment when it comes to selecting stories for public consumption and rush headlong to take sides in matters in which we lack the most rudimentary grasp of the technical issues at stake.

There is nonetheless, a college of thought which thinks constant criticism and hostility toward journalists can only mean that we are playing our role effectively and robustly, and annoying people.

As for scandal chasing by journalists, it ensures that people in authority and the rest of society do not engage in wrong-doing and illegal conduct detrimental to the public good and the rights of individuals. Well…?