Radio losing its standard in UWR — Senior Broadcaster

Mr Ivan Domasaa, a Senior Broadcaster in the Upper West Region, has bemoaned the falling standard of radio programming in the Region.

He blames it on the "laziness" on the part of some presenters to research before producing.

"Radio workers we are lazy. We are making the traditional formats of radio to die. It's because we want things in a cheap way. But if you are to do a good radio production for people to listen unless you work hard," he said.

Mr Domasaa, who was the Acting Station Coordinator for Radio Progress, said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Wa on the occasion of World Radio Day commemoration.

February 13 every year is set aside by the United Nations (UN) to promote radio as a medium of communication, increase accessibility and to encourage more people to use it.

This year's commemoration was hinged on the theme: "New World New Radio".

The Senior Broadcaster, with about 24 years of experience in radio work, noted that radio was a powerful tool for communicating to people, particularly in rural areas, in the language they understood.

He underscored the need for radio broadcasters to imbibe the skills of documentary and drama production.

"Drama production is one way you can use to entertain people and still inform them, but drama is almost missing in our radio programming.

"Documentaries and features are also some of them. If we take our time to research and gather information to produce, people will listen and enjoy it," Mr Domasaa explained.

On the impact of radio on society, he stated that it had helped to promote the culture of the people, especially preserving the language of the people in the Region through programming in their own languages.

Mr Seidu Bomanjor, a Development Communicator and broadcaster with the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, said unprofessionalism and deliberate negligence of media ethics had negatively affected the radio industry.

He said the 1992 Constitution had created room for any individual to be a media practitioner, which had resulted to the proliferation of the radio industry with non-professionals who churned out false and half-truth to the public.

“The 1992 Constitution says that there should be no censorship, and that we should hold government accountable, so all these are opportunities given to us. But whether we are living up to expectation or not is another matter.

“There are people who are in radio without qualification, some too are qualified but are doing it deliberately. Mischief is part of radio today,” he observed.

According to Mr Bomanjor, the public trusted radio and consumed every bit of information from it hence the need for the actors in the industry not to misinform the public.

—GNA