Thinking Aloud: Well spoken, Otumfuo
Tears shed for self are tears of weakness, but tears shed for others are a sign of strength - BILLY GRAHAM.
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Last Saturday the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, made one of the most stimulating addresses about the things that we need to do as a people to move forward. In his address at the 19th Ghana Journalists Association Awards Night, Otumfuo Osei Tutu clearly set before us our collective and individual responsibilities and obligations to sustainable development.
What gladdened the hearts of many was the charge laid on the doorstep of the government. Otumfuo pointed out the need for the President to provide functional, focused and firm policy direction for national development.
But he did not leave things there. He postulated that it is through our collective acts that we can move forward or retrogress. No matter what policies the government puts in place, if the rest of us decide to be passive no progress will be made, just as nothing will happen without a clearly defined policy from the government. Both citizens and the government have roles to play, whether complementary or supplementary, to move the country forward.
For media practitioners in general, especially media ethicists, the Asantehene struck a chord when he submitted that media freedom did not mean any reckless statement or baseless attack on the integrity of innocent persons.
If as the GJA envisages, the media are to help discern and promote the national interest through development journalism, then we must appreciate what informs development. After all, development is about human beings and how they apply knowledge and resources in the most meaningful ways.
Development journalism is the planned, conscious and systematic use of communication strategies and processes to bridge the informational and attitudinal gaps to establish and sustain meaningful change and development.
Development is not just about material change or physical infrastructure but more importantly about how people feel and think about the issues that confront them in their attempt to improve upon their living standards.
For those in the media, development journalism will have meaning only where journalists do not merely assert their right to freedom but equally accept their obligation to be responsible.
That will mean that those in the media will not take solace in a situation when confronted with issues of national interest which might have been presented in some warped manner by explaining away the fact that the media are the mirrors of society.
The media are more than mirrors. Ordinarily mirrors are fixed at certain points and it is only the objects whose images fall on them which are reflected.
The objective reality is that media personnel can move about and even reflect matters whose images they have not seen directly.
If we entrench ourselves in the mirror analogy, we would be less useful as tools to facilitate national development and our claim as agenda setters would be vain.
However, the work of the media becomes difficult in a society where some people in public office, including Ministers of State, hold the belief that the only way to respond to criticism is to destroy the integrity of those who criticise them.
As a commitment to using development journalism to protect the national interest, the media must begin to use facts rather than sentiments in deliberations.
For instance, in the matter of a judge in Kumasi who acquitted a rape suspect because the age of the suspect was not correctly stated, development journalism must take up the issue based on the law and not what people feel. That way, we would be giving a pride of place to the rule of law.
Development journalism will also require that in any discourse on national economic issues, including the depreciation of the cedi, no credible media house would just assemble a panel of party serial communicators who have no basic understanding of economic theory, the difference between fiscal and monetary policy or micro and macro- economic indicators.
We must educate ourselves to understand that development journalism does not mean fundamentalist loyalty in support of or against government policy without a critical evaluation of the import of the policy for the welfare and interest of the people.
There is the tendency in our part of the world to equate a responsible media to one which sycophantically support or violently oppose governments. Uninformed partisanship is no measure of media responsibility.
Development journalism must go beyond routine concepts and factors of progress. Otumfuo Osei Tutu has underlined some of the issues that confront us and undermine our resolve to use journalism to facilitate national development. Otumfuo has spoken, Nana wano hwam.
To the award winners, ayekoo. Let us use journalism to functionally impact national development. We must not only be part of the history, we must be the history of Ghana.
