The Type Of Journalist That Ghana And Africa Need

Saturday 27th July 2019 was a “red letter day” for me. I had spent the previous week preparing for an address I was to give that day to the 13^th Congregation of the Ghana Institute of Journalism. And I had developed excruciating pains in my waist and back. Nevertheless, I managed to finish the paper. The next question was: would I be well enough to go and deliver it to the audience at the International Conference Centre in Accra?

One hour before the scheduled time of 9.30 a.m., the question was still unanswered. And then, I decided to take a little walk around my yard to see how strong my legs were.

And I discovered that a plant I had potted only a few weeks ago, had flowered!

I bent down to smell the beautiful white petals the flower had produced. The scent was just as fragrant as I had fantasised it would be when I’d planted it.

I immediately turned that amazing act of creation into a metaphor: I would go and give the talk, for I would never know what fragrant flowers it might cause to flourish in the minds of about 1,300 young Ghanaians – the number of students of journalism who were to receive degrees and diplomas that day. 1,300 young spokespersons for the people of our country, many of whom had no access to the media! If they all turned their pens on the galamseyers of Ghana, those evil-doers would learn something!

So I went. I arrived late -- apologies to my invited guests whom I could not be at the door to greet personally. I am particularly sorry that some of my guests did not gain entrance to the venue: apparently another event was being held simultaneously at the vicinity of the Accra Conference Centre, and this created a lot of confusion and chaos. Even I, as guest speaker, was not greeted at the door and had to find my own way to the dais.)

Nevertheless, I am very glad I went. For the audience was an extremely beautiful and cheerful one! Young men and women in the colourful robes of newly-crowned Intellectuals. An amazing sight. Yes, it's great to be young!

My congratulations to the Chair of the Council of the Institute and his fellow members. And also to the Rector and the rest of the academic staff. What a job – helping to educate the educators of our populace. They deserve our thanks.

Unfortunately, though, good journalists cannot be made in the classroom. They can only be GUIDED to do certain important things when they do get to their “shop floor” – the newsroom or features desk of a newspaper or radio station; or for the more advanced journalists who become columnists and editorial writers, the lonely desk at home or in the office, where the ills of the world are dissected and solved – by one individual, working alone!

So, it was with humility that I began:
“Fellow Journalists and “Would-be” Journalists,

I have come to TALK to you, not to preach to you!

You see, journalism is one profession which almost everyone else thinks he or she would be able to do better, than its actual practitioners. How often do we hear people telling journalists, “Don't do that! Rather do this! Don't just criticise! Offer “constructive” suggestions.” There are other professions whose members play an equally crucial role in making societies work efficaciously. But when last did any foolhardy fellow try to lecture lawyers (say) about how to practise their profession? Or doctors? Or surveyors? Or engineers? They would tell you where you got off. But journalists are a soft target! And that’s because journalists touch so many aspects of everyone’s life. If you don’t know how your tax Cedis are spent, how can you vote wisely? Democracy is nothing without accurate information. And probably that’s what an American President meant when said in so many words that given the absence of a government and the absence of a free press, he would rather have a free press and no government!

Think about it: what is a government worth that does not get told by the media whether it is going about things the right way or the wrong way? Winston Churchill led Great Britain to defeat Hitler’s Germany in 1945. But as soon as the Second World War was over, the British electorate booted him out, because he was not quite interested in the electorate enough to give them what they wanted. He wanted them to do as he said, not what they told HIM to do.

And a very meek man called Clement Attlee, who would probably have run miles if Goebbels, Hitler’s Information Minister, had yelled at him, became British Prime Minister. And the British got a National Health Service which is second to none in the world. They also got Council houses. And unemployment benefits as well as many social reforms which the Labour Party has been trying to defend ever since, while the Conservatives try to dismantle them. And, of course, the British Labour Party would never have won power if the British electorate had only obtained its information from the Daily Express, the Daily Telegraph or the Daily Mail -- papers which worshipped Churchill and his rich associates. Fortunately for the British, they also had The Daily Mirror and to a lesser extent, the BBC. These organs of public opinion gave the Labour Party a say, and thus saved Britain from totalitarian rule.

The funny thing, though, is that if you gave an empty page to one of the noisy critics of the free press to fill, and allowed him or her to put in it, whatever he or she liked, they would, almost invariably, do precisely the very things they ask professional journalists not to do: produce a biased point of view; fill their paragraphs with prejudice; profess falsehoods that could take the paper to the law courts to defend a lawsuit for libel; they would be judgmental in choosing subjects to write about; etcetera.

If you don't believe me, just try and attend a press conference held by ANY political party! The party spokespersons would produce jaundiced views and incite the journalists present to propagate them! And there would be journalists ready to do the politicians’ dirty work for them. That’s how the saying was coined that: “You cannot, thank God, bribe the British journalist. There’s no need to, seeing what the man would do unbribed!”

But, you might well ask, if I don't want to preach to you, what do I want to do? Well, I think I shall just take you with me on a journey; a personal journey into journalism; give you what the academics call an “empirical” account of a journey into that profession that I happen top have made. What I saw; what I experienced: what judgements I came to on the journey, are mine and mine alone. I repeat they are entirely person. If you find them acceptable, okay. If not, well, you are on your way to acquiring you own personal experience. As they say in pidgin: “One day you go know!”

Indeed, you can't take people where they haven't been before, without seeking to open their eyes to the risks and dangers that you encountered on your way. If anyone thinks that a flag-post here and there can help them hail a vehicle in which they take a safe ride, well and good. If not, that’s also well and good!

My very first steps on the journey into journalism landed me in the offices of – a missionary paper; a Christian magazine. I discovered on it, what is called a “hidden agenda”. For the paper wanted to disguise its true purpose by calling itself New Nation. I joined it in mid-1956, just one year before our independence. Did it wish the “new nation” we were going to try and build to be run on Christian principles?

We gave publicity to persons who had reached high office and were known to be Christians. Now, 1956, the year I joined, was the year in which those who ruled the country of the owners of New Nation magazine came from, invaded Egypt in an attempt to keep control of the Suez Canal. British, French and Israeli forces went to Egypt with guns blazing, because the Egyptians had nationalised the Suez Canal! A Christian nation killing people and seizing property they considered their own because it was on their soil? But I was as green as nkontommire [cocoyam leaves] and couldn't accurately n relate the establishment of New Nation magazine in a Gold Coast about to become Ghana, to cultural imperialism.

I was only 19, an age at which the ego can become as enormous as Mount Afadzato! You write an article and the moment it appears, people can see your name in print? Great stuff, man. I had a whale of a time. The magazine enable me to travel all the way from Accra to the then Northern Territories, looking for interesting people and things to write about. I also got to know a bit about the Volta Region. And the lesson I learnt was: know your country, the subject matter of anything worthwhile that you will ever write. You can write about your feelings; you can write about the concerns of your little self. But those will change or pass. But your country will always be there. And if you represent it well and efficiently, your fellow countrymen will get to know that you care about them. And their warm appreciation, take it from me, will be better for you, in the long run, than riches.

But while doing my stint at New Nation, something odd was happening: I wasn't writing in the austere manner expected of a writer whose output was supposed to be useful to a supposedly Christian readership. I had been attending University of Ghana Extra-Mural Studies in my hometown, Asiakwa, where we were taught how to write essays by a brilliant man who had read English at Legon, Mr E C E Asiamah. According to him, the opening paragraphs of one's essay should be very striking, because if one could arouse the interest of the readers early on, they would stay on and read the rest of the piece.

I took this tip to heart and would spend hours on the opening paragraphs of my articles. But my editor, Mr Peter Barker, was an Oxford graduate who had served in the British army as a National Serviceman, and I do think he probably regarded my dawdling on opening paragraphs to be a “playground approach” to writing. Anyway, it didn’t appeal to his sense of discipline.

He would look over my shoulder and if he saw that I was still on Page 2, he would hit the roof. I would argue my case; we had one whole month in which to finish our articles and I wouldn't release anything to him until I was quite satisfied with it myself. He was quite fair, though, and didn't change much in my pieces once I'd handed them to him. However, the constant argument about style, added to the fact that on a net basis, I wasn't earning much more than I had been earning as a pupil teacher at Asiakwa (where I did not pay rent and was supplied free meals by my mother most of the time) made me begin to look elsewhere.

Before I go on, I want you to know that I have stealthily given you two precepts about good journalism without actually saying so: (1) you must READ, AND READ, AND READ, if you want to be a good journalist. In other words, accurate and interesting facts are the major keys that can help you enter the minds of readers you don't know but whom you want to impress so much that they would come back looking for things you had written.

(2) The second attribute I would recommend to you is that you must try and develop your own DISTINCTIVE STYLE and stick to it. Don't let anyone suppress your personality by changing the way you write, unless they happen to be extremely good writers themselves and even then, you must insist that they explain everything to you that they think you are doing wrong. You see, you are quite unique as an individual and an expression of that individuality through what you write is all you've got. You are no good to your newspaper or news organisation if people do not get attracted to your output and hanker after it. Therefore, if you allow your uniqueness to be freeze-dried out of your writing, your writing will be as dead as the formula pieces offered by the professional letter-writers who used to ply their trade, in years gone by, in the precincts of the Central Post Office in Accra! You know: “Dear Sir, please accept my compliments and allow me to indite you a communication praying your indulgence to offer me a humble employment as a….” blah blah blah!

As far as I was concerned, I had had a story broadcast on Radio Ghana while I was at Asiakwa, on a programme called The Singing Net, and when I came to Accra, I continued writing for it. Fortunately, the producer of the programme, Henry Swanzy, was the Head of Programmes at Radio Ghana, and even more fortunately for me, he liked my stuff. Now here is proof that what I say about your personal style is true: Henry Swanzy liked my stuff so much that he came to the New Nation office and tried to recruit me to Radio Ghana! I don't recall the occasion, but I've recently got to know that he recorded in his diary that I had said I wanted to “work for Christ” and so would stay at New Nation! Well, I am afraid that eventually Mammon won, and I applied to join the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation.

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