It is no hidden secret that since the 1992 African Cup of Nations (AFCON in Senegal if not after Libya 1982) Ghana has been perennial underachievers in the Nation?s Cup history.
Ghanaians had a lot of expectations about this year’s edition of the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) when the so called heavyweights of African soccer failed to make it to the tournament. In the tourney itself, the Black Stars failed to glitter.
The format the Black Stars adopted was just brutish- a player had to struggle to get one correct pass, balloon the ball the second time and the next person will count on luck to score and then he hits the headlines! It was a joke!
From our entry to our exit we failed to fashion out the best way of playing the game. This was an uncharacteristically frozen-cold, seamless team that made more people hypertensive anytime they played. Goran Stevanovic just used AFCON 2012 as a dress rehearsal! Our game plan, quality, standard, player selection and behavioral management among others have been suggested as the cause of the teams disappointing faring. But again, did the behaviour and conduct of sports journalists (some may be) contribute to the Ghana?s failure story? Regardless of their unrelenting drive for information, the sports media have plenty of unanswered questions as a broadcaster in the just ended AFCON.
This write-up is intended to look at today sports journalism in Ghana relative to the Blacks Stars Equatorial-Guinea Gabon fiasco.
Sports journalism is both an exciting and troubling industry. Today, the number of sports broadcasters (may be journalists) especially in the radio mainstream outlets is huge but the standard remains appallingly low and amateurish. A vast majority of what listeners, viewers and subscribers in general digest about sports comes with a lot of miseducation and disorientation. The reputation of journalists is continually being questioned. Nearly every public opinion poll shows that people are losing credibility for many journalists and in some cases the media outfit they represent.
It is amazing how the subject of card games among the Black Star players has been blown out of proportion by the sports media and dangerously taken to mean player truancy and a major contributory factor to the Ghana-AFCON bankrupt venture. And up till now no evidence whatsoever has been adduced to support that indeed there were professional gamblers within the football team. Not even one! Who was the gambler or who were they? Were they playing cards as a game or as a gamble? We cannot create our own opinions about things we cannot prove and begin to use those opinions as evidences in our presentations, no!
Ethics of reporting demand that professional journalists testify about what they have seen and not what they have heard or think. It is only weak minds that do that. It was also abundantly clear that some sports reporters are too far away from dynamism of the sports world. Many do not explore or do not avail themselves for emerging trends within the industry.
The fact is that card games have been part of building player psychology for years. In sports psychology, card games come with visualization and hypnosis and are admitted as effective mental ergogenic aids. It has since the 1954 World Cup been adopted by Brazil and Italy as an ergogyenic aid. West Germany had used it as the most effective routine for building social relations in an assembly of players who have egos. German players used it in the 2002 and 2010 World Cups (source: skyports.com). It has been a routine for many advanced teams. Their overall importance may be easily dismissed, but card games hold a number of vital sociological benefits for those who play them.
On the eve of the 2003-2004 UEFA Cup final between Valencia and Olympic Marseille, the then Valencia coach Rafael Benitez suggested and supervised a hotly contested cards game involving Roberto Ayala, Mista and Miguel Angel Angulo just to kick in Ayala?s concentration especially on Marseilles? Didier Drogba. In one of those particular cards games, Ayala took Mista on as Drogba and keenly engaged him to the cheers and admiration of colleague team mates but finally lost to Mista in a tough duel. So weird, isn?t it? But after the finals which Valencia won 2-0, Rafael Benitez in the post match interview admitted that card games the night before proved an effective way of building his players? intelligence and presence of mind especially for Ayala who emerged ?man of the match?. He literally took Drogba out of the game. These are professional players in bigger leagues so why should card games in a 2012 Black Stars team of professional players be taken to mean player indiscipline? Complete insanity!
Some sports journalists hide from the cold and indulge in senseless fanaticism. Sad to say though, but the sports media in Ghana is gaining notoriety as a bastion of sycophants and self-styled Football Association confidants and apparatchik?s who spew out most times, completely needless information and at the same time trivialize many relevant ones. It?s amazing! Yes, it is not ethically offensive to be nosing for information and it is equally true that there is no universal editorial policy within the media landscape. But common sense should guide what we put within the public domain.
Our duty to inform should always be guided by the duty not to puncture national team spirit and harmony as well as betray national interest. It is unethical when we engage in factual embellishment. By the many unproven allegations made against some senior players and some rising young ones, the 2012 AFCON sports media generally succeeded in injuring the credibility of some the innocent players. This corrupted the mindset and commitment of others to unleash their energies for team success and national course. Too bad!
It is equally deplorable the tendency of media to gravitate toward the dramatic sensationalism in coverage of the news. Open Sensationalism proved too bad and did harm national support during the tournament. At a point in time people surrendered their support for the Black Stars too early because of some ill-timed stories that were carried. The national psyche was polluted and some players denigrated even before the Ghana-Mali third place match with so many conflicting and apparently concocted happenings at the stars camp. Some of the stories were very weird!
This egregious practice was annoyingly evident especially in games where some players apparently did not fare too well. Adam Kwarasey, Mohammed Abu, and were victims of such comic comments that created some a bad impression on the mind of Ghanaians. Reporters and commentators developed perceptions many times from biased and judgemental frame of mind. Many that reported from the tourney unfortunately failed to seize the opportunities that were before them to encourage Ghanaians to rally around the Ghanaian flag.
In fact, that last minute flare of not too impressive camp news killed individual and collective focus and concentration of the players whose relatives and friends relayed information to them at camp. Within the subconscious mind, negative thoughts produce negative results and the result was the medal less venture that we embarked.
The sports media has a long tradition of wrong guess work and then blaming others for inadequate results. This has lived with time because our culture peculiarly honours the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect. The goalkeeping challenges at the tournament, from the same media, is been blamed on Kwarasey?s poor showing and the inability of Edward Ansah to groom or scout for goalkeepers to replace Richard Kingston.
Has the sports media so soon forgotten that they engineered the nationality switch and his eventual certification of Adam Kwarasey as Ghana?s safest pair of hands? Adam Kwarasey without mincing words was picked from the media opinion polls calls and not on competence and experience. Richard Kingson was diabolified by the same media immediately Kwarasey made his international debut for Ghana on 2 September 2011 in an 2012 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier and followed with a friendly match against Brazil at Craven Cottage in London three days later. In January 2012, Kwarasey was by described BBC sports journalist Farayi Mungazi (a friend of Michael Oti-Adjei and Sanni Diarra) as a “potential legend” for Ghana. A solution to the unending bickering in here is to discuss the problem more often without blaming or making judgments. Yes, Kwarasey at Gabon/Equatorial was a far cry of what we saw in his debut but the media cannot insulate itself from blame especially with the hype they gave this young, promising but inexperienced goalkeeper.
Many discussions were skewed towards personality issues instead of perspectives. In my view, there is nothing more vicious and outrageous than the abuse and misuse of the platform available to the Ghanaian sports journalist and the most horrendous is that what they say have succeeded in many ways in polluting average minds exploitation the ignorant. As of now, no concrete scientific diagnoses of the strengths and weaknesses of the playing body, management members and so on have come from the media so far. The most popular cause of our exit is some number 10 jersey issue, a juju that never got to Dede, Plavi did not listen to ?some people? and Asamoah Gyan?s penalty, that?s all. It is sometimes embarrassing when one sits back and listen to the quality of contribution the supposed sports journalist make on issues.
One can hardly distinguish between the street discussions that go on at the ?trotro? stations from what the ?sports analysts? do on their shows. Contributions from panelist often lack in-depth and the intellectual quality to befit the ?soccer pundits? they call themselves. The interviews are equally nothing but horrible arrangement of incoherent and uninviting questions laced with irrelevant fun spots. Many times a whole sports show spanning two or more hours is reduced to fun time actuated by blatant display of rascality, unbridled fanaticism and infantile mannerisms. By so doing, we make way for a serious crisis go to waste.
There was lack of that critical qualitative analysis that was to inform Black Stars? technical and management decisions and policy formation for the tournament. Many of those who were making waves on air were those who presented AFCON statistics relative to personalities and places. Pathetically, these unreliable tests have failed to produce the same results on successive trials yet every year many journalists waste air space to run this vague statistics. Many then after, engage in cheap generalisations, that?s all! So I ask: Where is the entire performance assessment of the Stars failure to glitter? Where are the intellectual analysis that will help identify the development needs of the Black Stars in terms of recruitment, selection, training and development? The sports media should be potent and competent enough to do that job.
Then is this embarrassing habit of journalists begging players for their replica jerseys, training kits and ?social welfare?. It is a shame and ethically objectionable, just to say the least. Many have succeeded in hyping average players and glorifying mediocrity in exchange for common replica jerseys and some pounds or dollars. The format is to conduct ?promo? interviews, tout players supposed credentials and end by asking: ?so would you respond to a call into the national team or why it is that you have not received a call into the national team?
The next is to sarcastically incite public pressure on the technical team to give their ?clients? a try or a playing time in the stars team. In a typical Ghanaian situation where people have idolised some journalists, there is very little or no urge at all to scan for realities relative to the qualities of those players. Such dishonesty in hyping players has proved very unprofitable. Many of such scandalous deals have succeeded in introducing ?weeds? into many national teams including the Black Stars. Former Minister for Youth and Sports, Akua Sena Dansua accused Ghanaian sports journalists of taking bribes from her detractors to malign her and scuttle her plans to develop the nation?s sports. What was she talking about then?
I think that at all times there is the need for sports journalists to strive for truth and the facts, no matter when and how. That is proper investigative journalism. One cannot make sweeping statements that bother in a player?s image and credibility and leave it in the public arena for treatment. I agree that even the most absurd report may in nearly every instance be traced to an actual occurrence; after all, in the absence of the reality there would have been no distorted or magnified image. But we must go that extra mile to discover the truth and that reality; else journalists must be humble enough to say they do not have the facts when actually they do not have them. Period!
And to the way to criticize; too bitter! That is not to say criticisms are not good, no. Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. But some sports journalists for personal pursuits engage in insincere compliments as against to sincere criticisms. The most distasteful is where some sports journalists deliberately twist subject matter to their point of view.
I think it is better to analyse before criticising than to criticize before analysing. Criticisms without sensitivism destroy social relations within the team, undermine team?s spirit, and spread a shroud of gloom over entire national spirit and confidence. Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish the development and growth of the team without destroying it roots.
The media in my estimation did not fare too well as a broadcaster and as a compliment for the overall success of the 2012 Black Stars AFCON trip. The media was the improper fraction in calculating the Black Stars Gabon-Equatorial Guinea debacle, and must resolve to buck up.
We must as a matter of principle and forward movement accept that where the Black Stars got to is where our collective efforts could take them to. After all the Black Stars did not have the divine rights to lift the cup, so journalists and Ghanaians must accept that. We cannot change anything until we accept it. The many uncensored condemnation would not make the situation better. The level of anger and vituperation with which some journalists are attacking personalities can only work against harmony. In recapturing our glorious past we need to refocus, and restrategize. We cannot accomplish our set targets by engaging in confrontation and condemnation. Hostile attitudes only serve to heat up the situation, whereas a true sense of respect for people who volunteer their time and efforts for national service gradually cools down what otherwise could become explosive.
Oti-Asirifi Mensah Joseph (Sports Broadcaster)
Email: otiasirifi2@yahoo.com
