POSITION YOURSELF TO MEET CHALLENGES IN JOB MARKET … Napo tells IBM&J students in Kumasi
THE Member of Parliament (MP) for the Manhyia constituency in Kumasi, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, has charged owners and stakeholders in the media industry in the country, to position themselves strategically to meet the challenges in the job market.
According to the MP, the increasing growth in technology and communication, coupled with consumer sophistication, requires that media industries adopt innovative skills and programmes, in order to satisfy their audience, and survive in the competitive market.
Speaking on the theme: “The Role of Journalism and Challenges facing it,” at the 28th Matriculation ceremony of the Institute of Business Management and Journalism (IBMJ) in Kumasi, Dr. Opoku Prempeh, popularly known as Dr. Napo, noted that the flooding of newspapers, radio and television stations scrambling for the attention of media consumers, posed greater challenges to the industry, in terms of revenues to sustain their businesses.
He noted that newspapers and radio stations in particular, face greater challenges with the advent of technology, adding that consumer sophistication had become so high that the audience tends to scrutinise the content of programmes and newspaper stories before making their choices.
Dr. Napo emphasised, “Media industries want their clients and consumers to know about their industry and services, or at least capture their interest adequately, so that they will be curious enough to part with their hard earned cedis to satisfy their curiosity.”
The MP for Manhyia further stressed that in the media enterprise, sales pitches must be perfect, and stressed that role of media practitioners was an art which career students must learn adequately, in order to bring new innovations into the system, adding “innovation is the only way that can keep you at the top of your game, satisfy your clients, and engage your audience, since that is the only way to succeed in this cut-throat world which is becoming more aggressively competitive day by day.”
He said an energetic media was essential, if Ghana, as a nation, was to have an informed, well-connected public, which can hold its government accountable for corruption, or any other forms of mismanagement.
Dr. Napo emphasised that the country needs a vibrant media to sustain our democracy, stressing, “If the media is muzzled or restricted, information will be withheld from the public, causing mass uninformation, disinformation, or misinformation at which point democracy shrivels, and poor governance goes uncorrected.”
The Manhyia MP, however, bemoaned what he described as the loss of priority of many media organisations in the country, a situation which, according to him, cast a serious slur on the integrity of the noble profession.
He asserted that some editors and media owners were continuously abusing the rights to freedom and speech, thereby reducing the essence of the journalism profession to a mere propaganda.
Dr. Napo stated that the essence of core journalism, in its sublime state, should not in anyway raise issue of propagandising for any political party, political leader or ideology, intimating that the focus should be to keep the public as fully and accurately informed as possible about what is happening in the country, and the world around us, in order to provide the platform for debate and discussions.
He, however, commended the management of the school for providing quality education, which had helped train professionals and personnel for the development of the country, and further called on the students to study hard and make good use of the opportunity provided them.
The Director of the Institute, Mr. P. F. Owusu, appealed to the government to set the right educational priorities for the benefit of students in the country, and questioned the rationale behind the decision by the government to provide free uniforms for school children, when most educational infrastructures in the country had not been improved upon.
He decried the current brouhaha surrounding the School Feeding Programme, and urged the government to quickly resolve the anomaly, in order to give the students the right frame of mind to study.
Mr. Owusu however noted that the institute, in its 19 years of existence, had trained over 4,000 professionals in both journalism and marketing, adding that plans were far advanced to upgrade the school to university level, after completing the development of both its new sites at Ohwimase and Ofoase Kokoben.
The Director appealed to the MP, and other well meaning people, to help the school secure a frequency to operate its campus-based radio station.
He stated that out of 210 applicants who applied to read various courses in the school, only 73 were admitted.
The Ashanti Regional Editor of the Daily Graphic, Kwame Asare Boadu, on his part, noted that influx of mediocre institutions, claiming to groom students in journalism in the country, was a serious threat to the level of the journalism profession.
He noted that the standard of the journalism profession would continue to shrink if the National Media Commission (NMC) and the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) do not put mechanisms in place to check the upsurge of journalism schools in the country.
Mr. Asare Boadu said the results of the increasing number of these mediocre institutions has been the production of half-baked journalists and media practitioners, who have little regard for the ethics of the profession.
“Sometimes lecturers who teach at these institutions do not even have the requisite certificates to work as journalists, let alone teach others,” he noted.
He emphasised that not only were these students producing poor quality media personnel, they were exploiting unsuspecting parents and guardians, by charging students exorbitant fees with the promise to secure them job placements, only to leave them hanging in the job market.
“I love this job very much, I sometimes sit back and wonder if journalism in the country has got a brighter future, with the continuous flooding of people claiming to be journalists,” he bemoaned.
Analyzing some of the challenges facing the journalism profession in the country, Mr. Asare Boadu said lack of access to public information was hampering the work of journalists, asserting that in the absence of adequate information, journalists are compelled to rely on rumours and half truths, which often lead to misinformation.
He therefore called for the speedy passage of the Freedom of Information Bill, in order to provide journalists in the country adequate rights to public information.
Mr. Asare Boadu also charged the management of the Institute of Business Management and Journalism (IBM&J) to introduce more technology-based programmes, in order to meet the challenging needs of the industry, and also charged the new students to study hard in order to acquire the needed skills for the betterment of their future.
The IBM&J was established in1990, and has so far trained about 4,000 students in both the journalism and marketing professions.