Let’s revamp, reposition GJA - Journalists advocate
Journalists at a seminar in Accra have underscored the need for the revamping of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), to play the role expected of it in the country’s developmental agenda.
The speakers, who bemoaned the current state of the association, where the organisation of election to elect new executive was still unknown, said, among other things, that the GJA should be positioned and transformed in such a way that would make it formidable.
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“We want our association to go beyond the issuing of statements and state positions on certain critical national issues such us those who must lead us,”it said.
According to them, the association, whose members formed the fourth estate of the realm, needed to be proactive in its activities and ensure that the standard of journalism was held high and respected.
The speakers, at the seminar on the topic the “GJA Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow - Repositioning For The Next Phase”, included a former General Secretary of the GJA, Dr Frankie Asare-Donkoh; a GJA presidential aspirant, Mr Gayheart Mensah, and a freelance journalist, Mr Manasseh Azure Awuni.
The event which had a high number of veteran journalists in attendance as well as the board Chairman of the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL), Prof. Kwame Karikari, and a former Managing Director of the GCGL, Mr Berifi Apenteng, was organised by KomsKraft Consult, a communication consultancy firm last Wednesday, February 2, 2022.
Setting the tone for the discussions, Dr Asare-Donkoh, who gave an overview of the media from the pre-independence era, noted that journalism standards were falling and that the time was apt for the GJA to intensify its training programmes to ensure that the practitioners performed in line with its code of ethics and professional standards.
According to him, the GJA had lost its value to the extent that whereas previously, it dealt with funding organisations directly, it now had to use middlemen and consultancies to go to the same sources on its behalf for funding.
“The GJA must be able to embolden its members to report on issues objectively irrespective of which political party its members are involved. At the same time, it must support its members to show humility and apologise when they realise they have either misreported an event or have got their facts wrong. That is one way of making the public have confidence in journalists and the GJA,” he said.
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Mr Mensah, who is also the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of KomsKraft Consult, said there was the need to make the GJA attractive so as to serve as an attraction for all those in the media space to join.
“Where is that association that can speak truth to government based on objectivity, based on principles, based on values, based on what we consider to be the overriding interest of the Ghanaian? And I say this because there is no profession in this country that has such close interaction with the citizens than a journalist.
For his part, Mr Awuni said the GJA had lost its sense of direction, purpose, shame, relevance and only existed to give a “few people the political capital to use for their own benefits.”
Regardless of that, he said, there was hope for the association to get better.
"With the right leadership, nobility can be restored to our hallowed institution. This forum has assured me that things can be done to restore the dignity of the association”, he said.
