Shameful journalists, toothless GJA. . . Journalists will be beaten all the time
Edmund Burke, in 1787, termed the media as the ‘Fourth Estate of the Realm’ during a parliamentary debate on the opening up of press reporting of the House Commons of Great Briton. The Fourth Estate, thus, comes after the executive, legislative, and judicial arms of government.
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Burke’s description of the media as the fourth estate followed Louis XVI classification and designation of the nobles in society, the clergy, and the commoners as the first, second, and third ‘estates’ respectively. With their potency, the media have arguably become the main means of mass communication, using television, radio, newspapers, and in recent years, the internet to provide the needed platform for members of the public to engage in a discourse.
Journalists throughout the world have faced several forms of attacks, including physical attacks by individuals and groups. In Ghana, journalists over the years have endured series of frustrations in the form of the use of obnoxious laws by governments, imposition of newspaper licensing laws, under which some people were denied licences to publish their newspapers, or others were denied the chance to set up radio or television stations under other legal and administrative regimes.
Added to these is the barbaric way some institutions and individuals physically assault journalists. Classic examples are the recent alleged beating in Kumasi of Daily Graphic’s Ashanti Regional Correspondent, Daniel Kenu by Baffour Gyan, the brother of the Black Stars captain, Asamoah Gyan, and Samuel Anim Addo, an errand boy of Asamoah Gyan; and the alleged assault on Afia Pokua, Adom FM’s News Editor by staff of the National Health Insurance Authority at Ablekuma.
Just around the same time, the Accra Mayor, Alfred Oko Vanderpuije, ordered police officers to arrest a team of media personnel from Multi TV who were filming people of Mensah Guinea in Accra whose houses had been demolished by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA).
All these cases are pending. Baffour Gyan and Anim Addo were arraigned before court in Kumasi before suddenly and shockingly, Kenu wrote to the court to withdraw the case. This is a criminal case and whether the disinterest of the witness could end the case is another issue for which we are all waiting for what the prosecutors and the court would do next.
Then last Tuesday, it was reported that the Gyan brothers, without any shame, were to hold a press conference on Wednesday. A press conference is meant for journalists to hear a person, persons, or a group of individuals or an organisation. Therefore, the Gyan brothers were simply inviting the same media personnel they had allegedly beaten to come and listen to them and publish what they would say.
Mr Ken Ashigbey, Managing Director of the Graphic Communications Group Limited called on journalists and their media houses to boycott the press conference. Strangely, I heard the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) General Secretary, Dave Agbenu, on Peace FM last Tuesday evening simply counteracting the call by Mr Ashigbey because, in his (Agbenu’s) view, the Gyan brothers deserved to be listened to. Very shocking!
Therefore, on Wednesday, September 24, the press conference took place and to the surprise of many who are not even journalists, some journalists flocked there to cover what the Gyan brothers would say. Information circulating indicates that after the press conference, some journalists who attended were given GH¢20.00 each. My God, what a disgrace!
The GJA Secretary got it all wrong. In most advance democracies, even important state institutions are from time to time boycotted by the media when the need arose. What at all is the importance of Baffour Gyan and Asamoah Gyan, the over-bloated Black Stars captain, to Ghana and Ghanaians? What is so important about them that when they assault journalists, they can still treat us with scorn and impunity and call journalists to go and listen to them?
Perhaps, they can buy lawyers, they can buy justice, and they can buy their freedom, but is it not shameful for journalists, who are supposed to be the conscience of society to be bought too and ridiculed? What Dave Agbenu must understand is that if the Gyan brothers had something to tell the world, they could have bought space in his (Agbenu’s) Ghanaian Times and put their message there.
I applaud Mr Ashigbey for his call for boycott, and I had wished we had a GJA prepared to defend its members and even all Ghanaian journalists. The GJA President, Mr Roland Affail Monney, last Wednesday asked for compensation for Kenu. But, is that what the GJA should lead journalists in this country to demand? We want justice, justice applied according to the laws of our country.
When Asamoah Gyan missed the penalty at the World Cup in South Africa against Uruguay was he beaten? At that time, Stephen Appiah, who was more senior to him in the Black Stars was ready to take the penalty but Asamoah Gyan decided to take it but he missed it, yet no one beat him. Maybe Ghanaians have to start pouncing on him each time he failed to score in a match for the Black Stars.
The journalists who thronged the press conference organised by the Gyan brothers last Wednesday, must bow their heads in shame. They are an embarrassment to the journalism profession. Their act is shameful, and more so those who took money after the press conference from the Gyan brothers.
Media institutions and their managements must also know that if they don’t stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their journalists when barbaric people in the society attack and assault journalists, they would definitely enjoy the ripple effects of such assaults on their institutions in one way or the other.
For the GJA and such journalists who think that the Gyan brothers deserved to be heard by the media after assaulting one of us, I can assure them that they will surely have their reward – journalists will continue to be beaten, and such stomach journalists who see the Gyan brothers as their financiers will become the most beaten.
Journalists deserve respect from the society just like any other professionals, but it must be noted that as long as we have a bunch of journalists who will follow their stomach and follow people like the Gyan brothers who do not respect journalists, no one will respect us.
The author is a Journalist and Political Scientist. He is the Head of the Department of Media and Communication Studies, Pentecost University College, Accra. - [email protected]