On Wednesday, June 24, this year, Nana Yaa Jantuah, formerly a key member of the functional executives of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) and one-time chief public relations officer of the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), now a Presidential Staffer, appeared on UTV as a member of a panel discussion on the station.
In the course of the deliberations, she stated that the NPP did not do anything in the course of the eight-year rule of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as President.
She expressed anguish anytime she hears an NPP member making comments about current developments in the country.
Whatever that represents is not what has exercised me, but a comment she made about the Ghanaian Times front page story in that day's edition of the paper.
Her comments touched on the professional exercise of journalistic practice of headline writing, particularly in the realm of print media.
She took a swipe at the headline of the story and made a derogatory remark that the headline was misleading, one of the cardinal sins in newspaper practice.
She condemned the headline " Over 1,700 displaced as floods ravage the Western Region" as misleading because the floods did not affect the whole region and suggested that an accurate headline should have read " Over 1700 displaced in some parts of the Western Region".
Another member
When another member of the panel offered a different viewpoint that the headline was justified and accurate, she reacted by suggesting that she doubted whether the panel member had ever been to a journalism school and, if he had, whether the school was credible or accredited.
She went on further to claim that that was not what they were taught or learnt from journalism school about headline writing, thus justifying her ill-informed, disinformed, misinformed and malinformed condemnation of the accurate headline.
As a former Editor of the Daily Graphic, the most authoritative and credible newspaper in the country's history, except during periods of military rule, and as someone who has always regarded his professional journalism credentials as taking precedence over his legal and academic teaching qualifications, I find such comments deeply irritating and offensive because they imply that journalists are second-rate professionals.
I was employed at the level of Associate Professor at the University of Education, Winneba in 2008.
That is why I am commenting about her condemnation of the headline to draw the attention of the Ghana Journalists Association to such comments, which erode public trust in the media, just as those who flout and undermine the constitutional guarantees of freedom of the media, which is in addition to the general fundamental freedom of expression available to all persons.
Unlike other professions, journalism stands for transparency and openness.
Therefore, journalism must tolerate criticism, whether informed or uninformed. Journalists criticise every other authority, profession or citizen without limits. Journalists can, thus, not be hermits.
But just as uninformed, baseless, one-sided reports and criticism by journalists are condemned and considered unprofessional, so also must any disinformed, ill-informed and malinformed criticism and condemnation of the media be frowned upon.
Headline writing is a highly technical area in print media.
The headline is informed primarily by the number of letters that can fit into a given space in the newspaper.
This involves, among other things, what is called headline count.
Each letter has a value in points.
For instance, W and M count as double against the other letters in uppercase, except I, which counts as half, while in lowercase, m and w count as one and a half against the other letters, except l, i,f, and t, which count as half depending on the calligraphy.
There is also the type or point size (font), which reflects the length or depth of the letter and the typeface, which reflects the depth or boldness and the lightness of the appearance of the type. It is after these technicalities that you can calculate the number of letters to fit the space, and then write the words of the headline.
Technicalities
All these technicalities must inform the length and number of words that constitute the headline, which must as much as possible reflect a summary of the story.
What then is seriously the difference between " Over 1700 displaced as floods ravage the Western Region " and " Over 1700 displaced as floods ravage some parts of the Western Region", except the length and number of words?
While the first allows for a shorter headline, the second, for all its length, does not offer any better particulars. How then could it be said that any of them is misleading?
In our profession, a misleading headline is the one that has no relationship with the story it is intended to summarise for the reader.
The headline "Over 1700 displaced as floods ravage the Western Region " would have been erroneous or misleading if the displacement had occurred in the Central or any other region in the country outside the Western Region, or if the story had nothing to do with floods but on a different subject matter, such as communal fighting leading to the displacements.
In the face of these technical realities and processes, the claim by Nana Yaa Jantuah that the headline of the Ghanaian Times front page of Wednesday, June 24, 2026, cannot be sustained.
The inclusion of " some parts of" could not have provided any certainty about the specific places which had come under the ravages of the floods.
The headline cannot, thus, be considered to be misleading.
The headline is professional and accurate.
That is exactly what is taught or learnt from accredited and credible journalism and communication training institutions.
Humble and professional
By all means, Ghanaian journalism has its flaws and low points.
We are noted to have breached the terms and provisions of the Code of Ethics of the GJA in many ways.
We are noted for trials by the media, embellishments, sensationalism, mixing of facts and opinions, as well as misleading headlines.
When these are pointed out to us, we must be humble and professional enough to admit our weaknesses and correct them. However, when people condemn or criticise the media from their own understanding and appreciation of the best professional principles and acts, these must not be disguised, clothed and framed as unprofessionalism or mediocrity.
While I do not subscribe to the view that criticism must be tolerated only when it is constructive, criticism that is not informed by objective facts or that flies in the face of indisputable evidence must be rejected for what it is.
Nana Yaa Jantuah's condemnation of the headline of the Ghanaian Times edition of June 24, 2026, " Over 1,700 displaced as floods ravage the Western Region", cannot be sustained or upheld. The headline passes all the technical tests of a good headline.
She is giving a dog a bad name to hang it.
The least she can do is rescind her condemnation and apologise to the Ghanaian Times.
