Are The Media Truly Serving Our Rural Communities?

Everyone who was brought up in a rural community knows how annoying it is to be asked where one comes from, only to be asked (when one answers the question): “Where is that?”

Why do we know so little about our own country? As a journalist, I accept part of the blame on behalf of my colleagues.

However, that’s as far as I will go in the mea culpa department, for when I became editor of the Daily Graphic in 1970, one of my first acts was to publish an invitation on the front page, inviting the paper’s readers to “BE A GRAPHIC CORREPONDENT”.

As a result, we began to obtain stories that The Ghana News Agency and the GBC (for instance) were not able to get. I made sure that those whose stories were good enough to be published were paid the usual lineage fees. We also gave by-lines to some of our freelance local reporters. Where the story was about something that looked promising but was badly written, we sent our regional correspondents to contact the correspondent and arrange to go and work on it with him or her.

The idea, however, died when I departed from the paper. For in Ghana, institutional memory is often blocked by personal spite, a lack of comprehension or sheer laziness.

Now. newspapers are published under conditions of pressure – especially, pressure for time, pressure for space and the pressure brought about by staff shortages. Little wonder, then, that usually, editors and their staff take the easy way out.

Innovation, in particular, is often frowned upon, for it usually demands “more work”. But, as one of my former employers, Jim Bailey, the late publisher of Drum Magazine, astutely remarked, “Many journalists take the job only to enjoy a permanent holiday -- at the expense of their employers!”

These reflections have been occasioned by an invitation I recently received to talk about Community Media to a group of student journalists. In preparation for the talk, I took a look at the output, on one day, of three of our publicly-owned newspapers.

I chose these publicly-owned newspapers – the Daily Graphic, The Ghanaian Times and The Mirror -- because as newspapers that are financed by the nation, they ought to be more aware of their responsibilities to the populace than papers that were established by private individuals, for their own purposes.

On the day that I made my study, the Daily Graphic carried forty-eight pages. There were only four stories that were not datelined “ACCRA”. The “Regional Page” had only two stories, both from Kumasi. There was one story from Koforidua, but it was a statement from a church, and could just as easily have been issued from Accra.

What saddened me most was that there was not a single Letter To The Editor – either from Accra or elsewhere. Letters To The Editor are the only means by which the readers can react publicly to the output of the staff of a newspaper, or bring to the notice of the general public, matters that might have escaped even the best reporters and feature writers on a paper. Letters should therefore be encouraged and be put in the hands of a public-spirited person, who enjoys debate and understands the need for a newspaper’s readers to carry out an interactive relationship with the paper.

In some countries, Letters To The Editor are valued more highly than the output from a paper’s staff, and are also combed assiduously by radio and television stations for ideas for follow-up interviews, in-depth reports and documentaries.

For they are usually written by (1) people who have been employed in important public positions but have now retired and who have a firsthand knowledge of how public services are run; (2) individuals with a sense of grievance who have been denied justice, or their human rights by officialdom and (3) citizens who have observed something in their community that is detrimental to the good health of the society and who are not afraid to speak out about it.

Even letters from those who wish to remain anonymous because they fear they might be victimized, can be published, so long as “names and addresses” of the correspondents are “supplied”. Of course, care must be taken not to publish slanderous material or what has now become known as “fake news”.

I now come to The Ghanaian Times. On the day in question, the paper had 32 pages. It carried more stories not datelined “Accra” than the Graphic did – twice as many, in fact. But again, not a single Letter To The Editor.

Now, I appreciate the argument that “Ghanaians do not like to write their opinions” to the media. But that argument is easily countered – if you have a garden, and you notice that it is lacking in some excellent plants that you’d love to grow, you don’t sit down and expect them to come into the garden by themselves!

You go out to the Parks and Gardens Department and ask it for assistance. Similarly, a good Features Editor should phone people up and ask them to write about matters that he knows are within their competence, and which are currently under discussion.

A letter from a knowledgeable person can be used to elicit other views, and a mini-debate can occur in the pages of the paper that can , provide further elucidation of the subject matter, in everyone’s interest.

It may appear, on the surface, that these are “minor” issues and that editors have a better use of their time and space than allot it to public opinion. The editors might even claim that they are giving their space to “messages” from the authorities. But I assure them that the authorities NEED a feedback from the public about what they are doing more than sending the populace “messages” through speeches.

The populace asks itself, whenever the Government pushes a line, “But what can we expect them to say”? ACTION speaks louder than words, and ACTION cannot take place unless someone somewhere demands it.

I did say that I also looked at The Mirror. This paper did carry one very short Letter To The Editor, but it was to praise the Customer Service staff of a bank for helping the writer obtain passport forms! Self-serving, it might be said.

The Mirror also had quite a few regional stories, but I must express my disappointment at how “thin” the paper was, generally, in terms of content. Apart from Ajoa Yeboah Afari’s thoughtful column, one simply “glanced through” it. Whatever happened to the paper – the only one -- about which E T Mensah once wrote a hi-life song: “Sunday Mirror, it is a lovely paper!”

Chums of the “inky fraternity”, please buck up. The Ghanaian community needs you now more than ever. You’ve sat down and watched until the only drinkable water now available to many village folks is sachet water – which must be bought. Examine yourselves, please: have you done as much against the evil effects of galamsey on our rural communities, as you could have done?

It’s late in the day – yes -- but never too late!