Always Late Than Never

Ghana is a country that left its destiny behind in another world, which is why it took more than one month for the recipients of the 2016 Ghana Journalists’ Association (GJA) Awards to be officially doled their prizes. The prizes themselves seemed quite decent, but the fact that the accompanying plaques that went with the awards had to be imported from China, is a situation that is well beyond shameful. It is simply scandalous. Which in Ghana is not saying much, because the very fabric of our mode of behavior as a people, these days, is synonymous with the very essence of scandal. It is beyond pathetic to think that common plaques could not be made in Ghana.

Actually, it is the essence of low self-esteem. I am quite certain that these plaques could easily have been ordered from a private company in the country. But, of course, a people with such an abjectly low self-esteem as our media operatives would not have seen and valued their worth. This is no news, when one reckons the fact that the country’s Parliament, not too long ago, had to import its entire set of furniture from China. The original set, that had lasted more than a half-century and was for the most part still intact, had to be chucked out and be replaced with half-damaged replacement furniture from Chairman Mao’s country. Some rascally cross-aisle cabal had decided that it would be better to shore up corporate China than more economically invest in some of our home-grown furniture-making factories. And so that was precisely what was done.

Even long before the prizes had been delivered, some disgruntled GJA members had decided that the Best Journalist of the Year’s Award, which went to Mr. Kwame SefaKayi, of the popular radio station Peace-Fm, was without merit. These critics were of the view that Mr. SefaKayi was not a journalist in the traditional sense of the term. I did not have time to follow the detailed contours of the argument, because it does appear to me that except for one or two cases, the Journalist of the Year Award does not appear to have been awarded to the right recipient. Several years ago, it was a former recipient of the Journalist of the Year Award who was virulently and imperiously questioning how a colleague working with him at the same radio station, a woman, had qualified for the award.

The unspoken subtext here, of course, was that the quite pretty awardee may very well have slept her way to the crown. But what flabbergasted me in no mean way was my discovery that although the GJA was founded in 1949, it was not until December 1985, barely five months after I had departed the country, before the maiden awards of the GJA were doled out. That is some 35 years after the association’s founding. What this readily tells me is that as a professional endeavor, journalism was never taken seriously, at least in the books of successive governments in the country. Under the Nkrumah-led government of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), so-called, there had been hardly any clearly defined distinction between journalism and propaganda.

As a journalist, you either worked for the government and blindly sang its praises, or you were as good as dead. Under such circumstances, good journalism and great journalists were highly unlikely to be nurtured and produced in the country. The political climate was too sterile for a healthy journalistic culture to thrive. Once one understands this erratic and morbid context in which the media profession has been incubated, it begins to make sense, albeit uncomfortably so, why organically relevant and independent media industry is highly unlikely to be taken seriously for quite some time to come. This pathetic state of affairs is by no means unique or peculiar to Ghana. It is more of a Third World and Socialist and Communist societal phenomenon. Good and healthy journalism appears to be more of a creature comfort of the West. Such was not always the case, by the way. The freedom of the press has had to be fiercely fought for.

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