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Nii Arday Quits Starr FM: The Inside Story

By Daily Guide
General News Nii Arday Clegg
FEB 15, 2017 LISTEN
Nii Arday Clegg

Lawyer Robert Nii Arday Clegg, a managing partner at Clegg and Everett, has quit his job as host of Starr 103.5FM's flagship show Morning Starr in a rather abrupt style which raises eyebrows.

NEWS-ONE gathered that Nii Arday's exit was not part of his immediate plans, but he had to abandon ship over what was speculated to be a continuous internal friction between him and a few big toes over his 'no nonsense' style of asking hard-hitting questions and producing verifiable facts to put his guests on their toes as though he was cross-examining rather than interviewing them.

Management of Starr FM issued a short statement confirming Nii Arday's exit and announcing Francis Abban, formerly of Joy FM, as the new host of the morning show.

The statement did not say why Nii Arday left, but expressed best wishes to him and said, “The Harvard-trained lawyer also became known for his trademark hard-hitting questions and engaging interviews since he took over the Morning Starr from Kafui Dey in September 2015.”

Deep-throats from the station told NEWS-ONE that though Niii Arday was largely celebrated by listeners for his style, he had internal challenges from a few persons who were of the opinion he was hard and overly probing on his guests.

The source said Nii Arday had insisted there was the need to raise the journalism bar and use radio as a tool for holding people accountable rather than just providing a platform to air make statements even when those statements can be proven as not being factual.

In a previous interview, Nii Arday told NEWS-ONE his mindset on journalism, saying, “If you have a global mindset, there may be a certain standard that would be higher than what pertains in your country… You are listening to news on CNN and you know it comes at a certain quality; you are reading the Times Magazine and you realise it is written at a certain level. All these affect you to raise your bar than the status quo.”

Nii Arday also made a few statements on journalism in Ghana, “….if as media people we all leave ourselves at the level where all we can do is to paragraph or read and that is all you can do, you become easily replaceable and dispensable because your value is minimal.”

He continued… “I think our media education should look at more content and detail. We should be able to teach some high level economics in journalism school so that you are not on the political or business desk simply because your boss wants to put you there but because you have what it takes to be there and you understand the issues. How can you be on the business desk when you don’t know what shares and dividends are; when you don’t even understand GDP, basic statistics and micro or macro economics at a global level yet you are expected to analyse a report by Transparency International? Let’s get some content and value.

“We are happy to watch CNN and enjoy their standard. Just run a Google search into the background of any face you see working on CNN and you would realise they have very high education and most have their masters in various fields. Some are lawyers; some are economists and they have very high self values and content. That is what is lacking in Ghana,” Nii Arday added.

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