Manasseh’s Folder: Hanna Tetteh, Joy FM and the hounds

Hounds of the same owner, our wise elders have admonished, do not tear the game apart. I grew up in the rural area and I understand this very well. I have chased rats and rabbits with hunting dogs. I have also seen a hunter who went hunting with up to five dogs around him. If the hunter spots a rat, rabbit, antelope or any animal, all he has to do is charge the dogs to go after it. In most cases, the dogs overpower their prey. But it is often not possible for all the five or more hounds to grab the game and present it to the hunter.

Since the hounds belong to one owner, they do not fight or tear the game apart. They either signal their owner to come for it or one of them drags it if the animal is light enough to carry. They don’t compete for fame even though all they often get for their toil are the bones that cannot be broken by human teeth.

The story of the hounds is one that needs to be told to journalists and media houses in Ghana if they have not heard it. The 1992 Constitution, among others, enjoins us journalists to hold government and public office holders accountable to the people. But we have turned the war on one another. Due to competition for audience, media houses often try hard to outpace one another; but the kind of nasty media competition ongoing in this country is wearing a five-piece suit over a war smock. It is ugly.

The first time I took serious notice of it was when I monitored media reports after Zoomlion held a press conference to react to Joy FM’s GYEEDA investigations. When Joy FM and Multi TV decided to travel to all the regions where the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) had its shambolic afforestation and guinea fowl projects, other media houses decided to sit in Accra and downplay Joy FM’s efforts with a so-called UDS report which its authors could not own up to defend.

These are just two of the many instances where the media seek to discredit one another instead of fighting together for the oppressed, righting wrongs and holding the keepers of the national purse accountable to the citizens who are swaying wearily under all manner of taxes and levies.

The latest manifestation of our pull-him-down syndrome is the attacks Joy FM is receiving from journalists from other media houses following a report that the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Hanna Tetteh, refused to speak to the station on the xenophobic attacks on our nationals in South Africa.

Journalists on social media, notably those from the Graphic Communications Group Limited and Citi FM, have taken turns to defend the minister’s actions and portrayed Joy FM as arrogant and petty for adding what the Minister said to our report. Reading through the various posts and condemnation, however, I did not see any valid argument against Joy FM apart from what appears like deep-seated hatred for the station.

When Joy FM’s Assisting News Editor, Fred Smith, contacted Hanna Tetteh that morning to find out what the government was doing about Ghanaians in South Africa in the wake of xenophobic attacks, her reply was, “I will not speak to you [Joy FM]. I will be speaking to Radio Gold. If you want, listen and take the sound from them.”

This was not the first time she declined interview to the station on important national issues. As Trade and Industry Minister, Hanna Tetteh sacked a Multi TV crew from a press conference and repeatedly refused to speak to the station. She is reported to have told a lady from Multimedia at a function to go and work for another media house if she wanted her (the Minister’s) audience.

Hanna Tetteh is said to have had issues with Joy FM in the past. One of her major beefs was when she stormed the station in 2008 during a live show and requested that she replace an NDC panelist only to be disallowed by the producer. There is no civilized media house that will allow this. In any case, Joy FM did not select her representative on the show.

If in a critical situation such as the xenophobic attack, the minister could not rise above her personal beef and continued with her boycott, what did Joy FM do wrong by merely reporting what she said? Or she has the right to boycott the station but the station does not have the right to report the boycott? Does this make sense?

There are times listeners expect specific public officials to respond to certain issues. It is only fair that you tell your audience why they may not be hearing a particular minister on your network when it is clear that he or she is the best person to answer certain questions. When former Manchester United Manager, Sir Alex Fergusson, boycotted BBC for seven years, didn’t they report the boycott? What is wrong with Joy FM reporting the boycott?

For lay people who argue out of ignorance that there’s nothing wrong with being directed to listen elsewhere and take soundbites or interviews for your story, it is understandable. But it is unfortunate for journalists to see nothing wrong with this continuous attitude of the minister. A media house only takes soundbites from other media houses when it cannot get the newsmaker, when it misses a programme on which a particular sound bite was made or when the exact sound of the newsmaker is of essence.

In this way, Joy FM takes sounds from Citi FM, Peace FM, Radio Gold and others and they also take from us. When the President speaks somewhere and one station misses it, it gets the sound from others.

The situation is, however, different when you are pursuing a fresh or developing story.

All media houses do not ask the same questions. They do not take their stories from the same angles. The questions Joy FM will ask Hanna Tetteh may not be the same questions Radio Gold will ask. Even at press conferences where there are opportunities for follow up questions, journalists still corner newsmakers and get exclusives. First year journalism students know this.

Article 162 (5) of the 1992 Constitution says: “All agencies of mass media, shall, at all times, be free to uphold the principles, provisions, and objectives of this constitution, and shall uphold the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people of Ghana.”

If there is corruption at the Foreign Affairs Ministry and it is my duty as a journalist to hold officials there accountable to the taxpayer, should I be asked to wait until Hanna Tetteh feels like speaking to a different station about it? Is this what my colleagues are championing or is because it is against Joy FM? The shea butter that is gloating over the misfortune of salt because it is raining should know that after the rain comes the sun.

For party foot soldiers and people who argue like them, the accusation is that Joy FM is anti-government and is doing the bidding of the opposition party. This joke was even contained in a government press statement last year when it accused the station of promoting a regime change. In fact, if there is ever any group of people who never seem to learn, or rather do not seem have any memory, then it is our politicians.

I was nearly lynched outside the Nima residence of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo after the 2012 elections when my crew was covering the visit by the AU Chairman to the opposition leader. When supporters of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) saw the Joy FM-branded car, they charged on us with all manner of objects. About 15 armed policemen and soldiers shielded our car and sent us to the Nima Police Station. We were later given a police escort back to the newsroom.

The NPP believed that the 2012 election was rigged and Joy FM, by calling the results in favour of the NDC, prepared the minds of Ghanaians to accept the rigging. In those days we, the staff of Multimedia, were an endangered species. We were advised never to wear anything that identified us as staff of Multimedia.

When I covered the NPP demonstration at Obra Spot, I had to disguise myself. The NDC communicators were all over town praising the professionalism of Joy FM and defending Multimedia for a good job done.

In the 2008 elections when the NDC was in opposition, the NPP succeeded in taking control of the state media in addition to the numerous pro-NPP media houses. As an intern at GTV, I personally witnessed the humiliation of the Member of Parliament for Keta and then Propaganda Secretary of the NDC, Richard Quashigah, when he brought an NDC campaign commercial to be played on GTV.

It was rejected because in that ad the two graduates in the video said the NPP government had destroyed the economy and there were no jobs. The argument of the GBC Political Broadcast Monitoring Committee was that they would not allow one party to attack the other. But in the days leading to the election, GTV played campaign ads in which the NPP described the NDC as murderers and thieves.

A report published by the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM), which monitored the election campaign and elections in Ghana was explicit on the fairness of Joy FM to the NDC:

“The state-owned television and radio broadcasters failed to provide equal or equitable coverage of the candidates or their parties in line with constitutional provisions,” the report states.

“During the campaign period for the 7 December 2008 elections Ghana Television (GTV) dedicated 33 per cent of its peak time coverage of political actors to NPP. NDC received 19 per cent, with CPP afforded 15 per cent and PNC 10 per cent. Presidential activities were widely covered by GTV and these activities received a total of 20 per cent share of this channel’s coverage of political actors, thus granting the NPP an advantage in terms of the amount of airtime it received.”

These presidential activities were mainly political so the NPP alone had over 50% of the coverage while the NDC had 19.

“The coverage of Radio Uniiq [GBC Radio] followed a broadly similar trend with 32 per cent of its coverage of political actors afforded to NPP, 19 per cent to NDC, 15 per cent to CPP and 10 per cent to PNC. The president received 17 per cent share of political coverage on this station.

“During the second round run-off campaign period 70 per cent of GTV’s coverage of political actors was of the NPP, its ministers or the president. Similarly, they received 66 per cent share of coverage of political actors on Radio Uniiq.” The report also shows that the state-owned newspapers gave more space to the NPP than the rest.

According to the report, however, “most of the commercial radio stations monitored by the EU EOM acted with responsibility for most of the campaign period. The one exception was Radio Gold that constantly criticised the NPP in its programming.”

“Joy FM and Peace FM provided balanced coverage of the two main parties with NPP and NDC receiving a 38 and 34 per cent share of coverage of political actors on Joy FM and 32 and 28 per cent on Peace FM with the remaining coverage largely afforded to the PNC and CPP. Radio Gold allocated a greater amount of airtime to NDC (46 per cent) than to NPP (32 per cent).”

When the NDC won power, its government boycotted Multimedia platforms. Richard Quashigah, who had a campaign commercial rejected by GTV a month earlier, now had the power to cause the truncation of a live GTV Breakfast Show because of what he termed as improper constitution of the panel. So it is not difficult to find why they suddenly turn against stations like Joy FM.

Before I joined Joy FM in November 2012, I heard so many things about the station. “They are proud and arrogant,” some critics warned me against joining Multimedia.

But I have come to realize that if you are said to be proud and arrogant in our country where timidity is often mistaken for humility, it means two things: you are either proud and arrogant or that you stand out and are not prepared to stoop to the mediocre standards of our society to be patronized and kept down there.

“Perhaps, that is why former GBC Director-General, William Ampem-Darko, said on Facebook of the attacks on Joy FM: “It is the price you pay for being a giant among midgets.”

If believing in yourself and standing for what is right is arrogance, then I can say there is so much arrogance at Joy FM. In newsrooms I worked before coming to Joy FM, the heads have the final say and no one dares challenge them when they talk. But one morning when the Managing News Editor at Joy FM gave a final ruling on a story, I went on to explain further and he accepted my judgment. Now that is arrogance, isn’t it? And does this tell you someone somewhere makes decisions for or against any party?

Joy FM is “arrogant”, even to its business partners. When a multinational company tried to stop a damaging story about it from being pursued by a Joy FM reporter, the station stood by the reporter. The company threatened to withdraw all its advertisement but Joy FM stood by its reporter and carried the story.

Till date, Israel Laryea talks about this with admiration for the station suffers for its stubborn refusal to kowtow to the dictates of others in pursuing the truth in the interest of the state. The multinational company in question carried out its threat and withdrew all its adverts with Joy FM. They came back after six months. Now that is pride and arrogance by Joy FM, isn’t it?

Joy FM teaches its reporters to be humble and respectful but we are also taught to stand intimidation.

I covered the Presidency only once, but when I realized the presidential reporters were being treated like rags, I told the one coordinating the press that day my piece of mind. He said that was how the situation was and I told him at the residence of President Mahama that I would never take that disdainful treatment from anybody.

You cannot invite journalists to the president’s residence and keep them outside the gate for over five hours without even chairs, let alone water. No journalist from any media house spoke out even though I was about the youngest. Now if anyone thinks that is pride and arrogance associated with Joy FM reporters, then I think it is a badge of honour I am prepared to wear into my grave.

A man’s praise, they say, sounds sweeter when it comes from another person’s mouth. But the agama lizard which fell from the high iroko tree said it would praise itself if no one else did. Joy FM is undoubtedly the most influential media house in Ghana, driving change and influencing national policy.

As we speak, the Chief Justice has ordered judges to move to prisons to hear cases of remand Prisoners following Seth Kwame Boateng’s ‘Locked and Forgotten’ documentary.

About 50 remand prisoners have been freed after the few sittings while many others have been granted bail.

Joy FM’s crusading roles in stopping the looting of the state through GYEEDA, SADA and other equally compelling works that have brought improvements to many communities and institutions are outstanding.

These are the reasons the boycott of the station by a minister whose relevance is as unpredictable as a reshuffle should not cause many to gloat. If all ministers of state should refuse to speak to all media houses in the country today, one media house that will still have compelling bulletins is Joy FM because it does not survive on the “he said” and “she said” kind of journalism.

What all journalists in Ghana should remember is that we are all hounds of the same owner (Ghana) and the energy we spend in pulling one another down can be used for something worthwhile.

And those who are rejoicing today because it is Joy FM should not forget what one of the victims of the Nazi brutalities, Pastor Martin Niemöller, once said:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

The writer, Manasseh Azure Awuni, is a senior Broadcast Journalist with Joy 99.7 FM. His email address is [email protected]. The views expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the columnist and are not the position of the station on the matter.