The Leveson Inquiry is more generally a response to the
public’s anxiety that there is something not right with the way media
institutions and media people operate. This disquiet reached its height at the
death of Princess Diana when it was revealed that she was being pursued by a
hoard of photographers, collectively known as the paparazzi, when her car
crashed into the tunnel in Paris. People believe that in many ways media people
have overstepped an ethical red line for far too long. In the UK and other
Western countries it is customary for governments to respond to such perceived
institutional breaches with formal inquiries in order to find solutions to the
wrongs that the inquiry unearths.
This is a sound method of government which is largely missing
in this country; here such inquiries are not popular because they are often
perceived as instruments of politics and likely to be denounced by the party in
opposition as a witch-hunting exercise. We ought to change this attitude, and
we can do this by setting up our own version of the Leveson Enquiry into Media
Ethics in Ghana.
Perhaps such an examination is long overdue but it is now
more urgently needed than ever before. Complaints about the media come in
barrelfuls per day and these have become accentuated by the abuse of media by
politicians and media people especially in election years, but the things that
are wrong with our media go beyond politics and cannot be fixed with the usual
calls on “the media to be circumspect in their reportage”, which is a
nice-sounding but meaningless phrase at the best of times.
One often hears that the Ghanaian media is one of the freest
on the African continent, which is true if by free we mean it operates in a
free-for-all dog-eat- dog unregulated terrain. But free as an expression of
quality and access would need to be looked at a bit more closely. As with everything
in Ghana, what you see is sometimes completely different what really exists;
the freedom of the Ghanaian media, even when used to mean insulation from
government may not tell an accurate story. We do not know; which is why a
full-blown enquiry is required.
The impression that the Ghanaian media is free comes from two
premises. In historical terms it is valid to speak of two broad eras where the
media is concerned; pre- and post- 1992. Contrasted with the pre-1992 era this
is supposed to be the golden age of the media mainly because the excessive use
of state power to lean on the state-owned media has been lifted by
constitutional guarantees but whether this constitutional insulation has been
effective needs to be discussed. Despite the presence of the National Media
Commission a careful reading of the state-owned press reveals that editors and
editorial minders still work under pressure, which may or may not be justified.
In many ways, saving the media from the state is the easiest
of the many-sided nature of the Constitution’s purpose regarding the media. If
for no reason at all, the state’s influence is both predictable and visible, if
we care to look closely. What is more insidious is the influence of the
practice of media corruption, commonly referred to in Ghana as “soli”, but
which is more generally known as “brown envelope journalism” in media studies
across the world. The phenomenon has become so pervasive in Africa that it now
has its own academic discipline complete with gurus who pronounce on its every
historical twist and development.
In Ghana we turn to treat “soli” as merely a sick joke or
perhaps a moral failing on the part of journalists. But “soli” is a greater
threat to the freedom of the media and expression than state officials and politicians
abusing their positions. This is because whereas we all condemn state
intrusion, which forces the state to find covert means of controlling the
media, “soli” has a direct effect and does not hide its face. Indeed, you can
meet “soli” everyday wherever a public event brings media people face to face
with benefactors in the shape of events organizers. No amount of preaching
against “soli” has shifted the ground one bit, so rather than condemn the
practice blindly we need to delve into it, alongside the many other media ills,
in a structured way.
You would notice that throughout this article I use the term
“media people” instead of “journalists” because the former has become a vague
and amorphous description of a whole lot of activities and occupations within
the media landscape. In the olden days we had the “press”, and those who liked
me reported and wrote news and features were known as journalists. In the
course of the past 20 years this term, “media person” or its even elongated
cousin “media personnel” is used to refer to disk jockeys, journalists, news
readers, advertisers, actors and many others, especially in broadcasting. These
are all important functions but the term “media person” is not only bereft of
specific meaning but is adding to the confusion and anxiety about the media.
In addition to the above, a frightening development (I don’t
know how long it has been) is the demand for “soli” money from journalists by their
non-editorial colleagues who argue that because of their peripheral duties in
the gathering news they are also entitled to “soli”. On the one hand, this
we-are-all-in-it attitude makes sense; after all without the driver the
reporter would not get to the assignment which yields the “soli”. On the other
hand, this is a dangerous trend because it puts principled journalist under
pressure. Last week a journalist told me about the time the driver refused to
drive back to the office after an assignment without his share of the money she
refused to take. She had to give him money out of her own legitimate earnings.
As if that is not enough, apparently, typesetters and other ancillary staff at
newsrooms all demand their share or else…
We cannot blame reporters or even drivers for being greedy
because the story is far more complex. This is just the tip of the iceberg. We
have stories of newspaper owners telling their journalists that their business
card is their pay. In other scenarios news editors are said to demand their
share too before a news report is published. If you add all these to
allegations that newspaper vendors dictate front-page headlines it is not
difficult to conclude that what you are being offered as news today is a
compromised product and not the result of the application of true news values.
We need an official inquiry so that our media can be strengthened to play its
proper role in our lives. To paraphrase a famous statement, the unexamined
media is not worth our respect.
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