Newspaper reviews are regular programmes on radio and television networks throughout the world.
The difference from country to country may lie only in the form the reviews take.
Years ago, the state-owned radio station, Radio Ghana, focused only on the editorials of the newspapers after its major bulletins but did more detailed “from the Ghanaian newspapers” in the afternoon.
Enter the liberalised airwaves in the 1990s and the newspaper review segments on radio and television changed dramatically.
Some of the radio and television stations stayed within the confines of best practices of newspaper reviews. Those networks focused on the headlines and a few paragraphs of the stories, while many of them virtually read the newspapers from cover to cover.
Publishers and editors of newspapers have suggested to radio and television station managers, particularly morning show hosts, not to ‘cannibalise’ the works of the editors on their shows. Newspaper reviews on radio especially and on social media platforms have combined to disturb newspaper sales in the country.
However, the rules of copyright governing the use of newspapers are quite fluid, for which reason some legal brains have cautioned newspaper owners to hasten slowly in testing the law in court.
There is a school of thought that posits that so long as the radio stations credit the newspapers for the stories they read on air, they have not infringed any copyright law.
But newspaper publishers are arguing that since the radio stations earn some income from the newspaper review programmes because they are sponsored, the stations should be prevailed upon to take another look at the format of the programme.
The newspaper reviews are not hurting only publishers and editors of newspapers but also the thousands of vendors who sell newspapers every day.
Newspaper vendors in the Western Region have fired the first public salvo by expressing concern over the effects of newspaper reviews on their business and have called on the National Media Commission (NMC) to regulate the manner in which the programme is currently being done on radio and television.
The Daily Graphic calls on the management of the Graphic Communications Group Limited and the New Times Corporation to collaborate with the Private Newspaper Publishers Association of Ghana (PRINPAG) to dialogue with the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA) to assess the effects of the reviews on the fortunes of the newspaper industry.
Besides the effects of the reviews on the newspaper industry, the reviews are also affecting the newspaper reading culture in our country.
We call on the NMC to bring the parties together to resolve the matter in the interest of journalism and not victory for any of the groups.
