Media C’ssion Chairman Commends New Times Corp

The Chairman of the National Media Commission (NMC), Mr Paul Adu-Gyamfi, has commended the management and staff of the New Times Corporation (NTC) for their collective effort to pull the corporation from despair to glory.

In what he described as a “set sale”, the chairman recalled the days when the Ghanaian Times could only be sold alongside the Daily Graphic and congratulated the board, the management and the workers who contributed in bringing diversity into the content and outlook of the paper.

Mr Adu-Gyamfi made the commendation at the inauguration of the Board of Directors of the NTC in Accra yesterday.

The board is chaired by Professor Kwesi Yankah, who is also the Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana. The other members are Togbe Avudzega Soga, Mrs Harriet Amoah, Mr Anthony Ekow Dadzie and Mr Derby Amissah-Arthur. The rest are Mr Eddie Adiin Yansah, Mrs Genevieve H. Haruna and Squadron Leader De-Graft Elionah

Mr Adu-Gyamfi linked the successes achieved by both the Ghanaian Times and the Weekly Spectator to the social outlook of the papers which had challenged the apocryphal notion that Ghanaians were interested in only political news.

While encouraging the staff and the management of the NTC, Mr Adu-Gyamfi noted, “You have demonstrated that with good treatment and an excellent professional touch social stories will interest the nation and debunked the irony that ordinary people on the street are not interested about themselves.”

He was of the view that the inauguration of the board, in as much as it signalled another level of purpose by the NTC, also represented a pull by the nation from the doldrums of poverty and despair, since hope was created for the next 50 years, the company having survived the first Golden Jubilee.

Mr Adu-Gyamfi charged the new board to include in its search for solutions to social problems the happiness of the staff who had toiled to make the organisation to stand on its feet.

The Chairman of the board, Prof Yankah, urged media houses which were still in a slumber to be awake to their constitutional obligations.

He said each step taken by the media, stories featured and the editorials written should be guided by matters of national interest and development because those were the issues at stake on the scene at the dawn of Ghana's independence 50 years ago.

Prof Yankah urged all journalists in the state-owned media to reveal and unravel issues which sought to improve the welfare of the social niche in which they operated and not to be deterred by the challenges of competition from the private sector, since the objectives of journalism pertaining to national interest and development remained the same.

He the gave assurance of the board's dedication to deal with the manifold challenges facing the corporation in relation to the unfair comparison of state-owned media, without recourse to the circumstances in which they operated.

Prof Yankah expressed delight at the gains made by the staff, the management and the previous board for the improvement of the papers, in addition to the tremendous boost in advertising and circulation over the years.

He appealed to the government to intervene by undertaking a major recapitalisation exercise in the corporation in order to completely transform the physical infrastructure.

Story By Hilda Owusu