Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press,
I belong to your Fraternity/Sorority. And I am aware that we often tell one another?, rather ungrammatically, ?Dog don?t eat dog!?
But it is a false notion. For some papers deliberately slash their cover price, in order to force competitors to do the same and go out of business.
As regards what journalists could be up to in competing amongst themselves, read ? yiee, did I hear myself say read? ? a novel called Scoop by Evelyn Waugh. Ladies and Gentlemen, pardon the impertinence, but when did any of you last read a novel?
Most Ghanaian newspapers can each be read in ten minutes dead. But I remember a time when the then Sunday Mirror, sister paper of the Daily Graphic, was edited by a person so literate that he sought out and serialised NOVELS!! Yes ? both People of the City and Jagua Nana, by Cyprian Ekwensi, a writer who was not even a Ghanaian but a Nigerian, were serialised in the Sunday Mirror! The inimitable E T Mensah was inspired to write a song about that paper.
The first short story to be published in Ghana by our foremost novelist, Ayi Kwei Armah, was the winning entry in a short story contest organised by the so-called ?girlie magazine?, Drum. The story was called The Offal Kind. I remember it because ? I won?t hide under the cloak of false modesty in this article, thank you very much ? I was editor of Drum at the time.
I dare you to do some research and try to prove that we were not high-minded! You can?t because we were aspirational. But what do you guys publish these days?
Endless reams of press releases and PR fluff.
Stodgy rationalisations of why public expectations of good service or proficient manufacturing cannot be met.
Boring, illogical, irrelevant and waffling features, sometimes by ?columnists? many of whom have nothing to say but write as if they have paid features editors to get their names into print.
No topicality or relevance (repeat ten times).
No internal logic (repeat eight times).
No educative content (repeat six times).
No surprising or new information (repeat four times).
Nothing to entertain the reader (repeat twice)
Nothing worth reading! (Just repeat that).
Worse, you don?t follow up any real news when you occasionally publish any such thing.
In fact, real news seems to be an awful bother to some of you.
Fancy trying to get our taciturn police force to divulge to you why we haven?t heard anything new about the prosecution of the people arrested in connection with the murder of 72-year-old Madam Amma Hemmah, who was burnt alive and killed at Tema at 10 a.m. on November 20, 2010, having been mistaken for a witch!
How many articles have you published about dementia, or alzheimer?s, to alert the public that loss of memory in senior citizens does not necessarily indicate witchcraft on their part? When did you last feature the ?witches? camp? in Northern Ghana? Has trokosi vanished from Ghana? When did you last shine the torch of publicity on it? Is galamsey a dead issue?
What happened to the soldiers who assaulted your fellow journalists during the parade marking the 56thanniversary of Ghana?s independence at Black Star Square in Accra on March 6, 2013? When the armed forces PR department lied to you, what was your reaction?
Furthermore, what has happened to the case involving the collapse of the Melcom shopping centre in Accra in November 2912? Some Ghanaians were killed. Tough, huh?
Or of the rampant outbreaks of fire at markets, both in Accra and Kumasi? Ah, if the Government has got the reports but won?t publish them, what business is it of yours, huh? Do you know that you are put above the Government when it comes to ensuring that the public warfare is maintained at all times, the Government being the chief perpetrator ? everywhere ? of public malfeasance? Have you heard of what the NSA and GCHQ have been doing in the USA and Britain? Suppose the media in those countries were like ours, would we ever have heard of the numerous official abuses of citizens? privacy?
Did you do any independent investigation at all of the case in which a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer allegedly stabbed and killed a suspected robber at Wa in July 2012? Can you imagine what would happen to any Ghanaian ? accredited diplomats included ? who stabbed and killed someone in the USA?
Did you know that the United States embassy asked for money to indoctrinate Ghanaian officialdom and the public on genetically modified foods? Have you tried to find out whether the US Congress has ever passed a law under what law that empowers the US embassy to use public funds to act as an agent of private companies like Monsanto?
Listen, guys. Journalism in Ghana wasn?t always as lame as you?ve made it, you know? In 1967, the National Liberation Council (NLC) Government, having booted out the Kwame Nkrumah Government which it accused of dictatorship, found it conscionable to dismiss star editors of the state-owned press ? Moses Danquah (The Ghanaian Times), John Dumoga (The Daily Graphic) and Henry Thompson (The Evening News) ? for questioning the terms under which the Government had disposed of the State Pharmaceutical Corporation and handed it to an American company, Abbott Laboratories.
This led to a crisis for the NLC, for the NLC?s own Commissioner of Information, the incomparable K G Osei Bonsu, resigned ? the first and only time a Ghanaian Cabinet Minister had voluntarily resigned his post in defence of a principle ? namely, freedom of expression!
Ha ? the NLC, trying to be clever, didn?t tell yours truly the circumstances under which Dumoga had been sacked, but offered yours truly the editorship of the Daily Graphic.
But purely on intuition, yours truly told Mr L K Apaloo, the Cabinet Secretary, ? totally unprompted ? that if there was ever a conflict between the public interest and the Government interest, he would be ?on the side of the public interest!? The offer was withdrawn forthwith!
Three years later, yours truly was again offered the editorship of the Daily Graphic. And guess what? He came up against the public interest conundrum again: he was dismissed after he got into ?a conflict of interest? argument in which he plumbed for his principles against those of the Government that appointed him!
Guys, please raise a glass to the illustrious fighters in our ranks who are no longer with us ? to Moses Danquah. To John Dumoga. To Henry Thompson. To Tommy Thompson. To John Kugblenu.
They too had families to feed. But they did what they thought was right for their country. Above all, they informed themselves well of what was going on in their country and told their fellow countrymen what they thought. Free as a bird they were. Unfettered by self-censorship imposed by greed or cowardice or both.
They were not the type of ?journalist? to be found on radio stations braying extremely loudly like a hungry ass, day in day out. Making no sense. Spewing lies. Peddling illogicality. Mostly for money.
For allowing the sale of Merchant Bank to Fortiz to go through; for conniving at the GYEEDA rip-off of public funds; for pussyfooting over SUBAH; for winking at the misapplication of the Media Development Fund and pretending that no money can be filched from the distribution of laptops to schools and journalists. And for being fooled about the migratory habits of nkomfem (guinea fowls), I hereby award you the Order of the Braying Ass, No Class Division.
Ladies and Gentlemen, you have my warmest congratulations.
www.cameronduodu.com
