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05.08.2015 Feature Article

Who Is Watching The Watchman - TV And Our Society

Who Is Watching The Watchman - TV And Our Society
05.08.2015 LISTEN

In my line of duty I deal with a lot of TV stations which makes it difficult sometimes to criticize them but as citizens we need to ask questions and interrogate issues when we don't understand them. For some years now I have observed with keen interest the way our TV stations have managed to mislead and continue to mislead us whiles those who are suppose to be in charge just sit aloof and I will just deal with 2 or 3 of the issues.

1. Soap opera: these are series created for old men and women abroad who have nothing to do or are bed ridden just to occupy their time and work on their retentive memory at the same time but what do we see here, our local stations have bombarded us with the Acapulco bays, sunset city, Esmeralda and now lagata which even has a Facebook account that people contribute to. The effect on us is that some have given their kids Mexican names and our mothers are wearing Brazilian hair. For me the fact that I have to spend 2 hours of my limited time everyday watching someone's culture just puts me off and besides have you ever seen any Mexican in Ghana before? They don't even know we exist.

2. Witchcraft and Sikaduro movies: now the kids are on vacation and you pass by the house for lunch unannounced just to find them watching some witchcraft and sikaduro movies then they quickly switch to MultiTV kids when they see you. I didn't spend too much time in the village that's not to say am not a village boy but for the purpose of this submission make brothers allow small, so back to the issue, I did not experience those witchcraft things as I also never saw them on my screen growing up so my moral fabric doesn't have that stupid mentality that someone is always doing you like we say locally. My question is that is it because most of our film producers were raised in the village that's why they tend to raise our kids via movies that way? The effect of this is sakawa and the ills we see in our society.

3. Lastly music videos: they show butt and breast shaking foreign music videos for free yet charge exorbitant prices from locals for showing our music videos. Just walk to TV 3 or Metro and find out how much they charge per month and ask them if they charge R Kelly and Chris Brown when they show theirs. Whether we like it or not we are highly influenced by what we watch and unfortunately TV is the one raising our kids because of our search for money in these economically hard times I therefore believe that those in charge ie NCA, NMC and co must sit up because we are loosing it as a nation.

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