Karikari lauds media for sustaining democracy

The Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), Professor Kwame Karikari, has attributed improvement in the country’s democracy to the significant role being played by the media.
He, therefore, underscored the need to strengthen the capacity of the Ghanaian media to make them more effective in sustaining the country’s democracy and expanding the frontiers of freedom of expression.
Prof. Karikari made the remark at the first meeting of editors and media managers in the country to discuss the Ghana Media Standards Improvement Project, an initiative launched in June, 2009 to enhance the performance of the media in the country.
The project, which is a collaboration between the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) and the MFWA and funded by the Royal Dutch Embassy in Accra, seeks to develop and improve a culture of investigative, editing and analytical writing among Ghanaian journalists.
In a presentation of the concept of the project, Prof. Karikari said the project had become necessary as a result of the changing trends in the media industry worldwide and the need for Ghanaian journalists to catch up with these trends.
To achieve this, he said the pilot project was considering four main objectives in investigative reporting, to cover many of the issues that had not been covered by the media due to some factors beyond the capacity of the Ghanaian media practitioners.
Other objectives include the improvement in the management and administration of media houses.
The project seeks further to help and to empower media houses and their reporters to go into specific areas of specialisation such as petroleum, which is regarded as a very complex domain to report on.
It is expected to last for two years, and would involve four selected newspapers and eight radio stations, most of which must be based in the rural areas of the country.
The project would involve three main activities, which includes organising series of fora on selected issues of concern to the media, such as the use of photographs in newspapers.
Professor Nana Ansu-Kyeremeh, a lecturer at the School of Communication Studies of the University of Ghana, presented a paper on preliminary findings on a survey conducted to establish the media habit of Ghanaians in the country.
He said the core objective of the research was to ascertain the public’s estimation of the media terrain and journalists in the country, as well as to establish who was reading what.
Though findings from the work were yet to be finalised and made public, he sought the permission of the house on the possibility of making the outcome into a media rating.
The Editor of the Daily Graphic, Mr Ransford Tetteh, moderated the programme, while Mr Berfi Apenteng, a media consultant, led the discussions.