Journalists told to assist readers to make informed decisions.(D/G Thursday, August 7, 2008 Page 32)

Story: Benjamin Xornam Glover and Alhandu Abdul-Hamid, Bolgatanga.
A Veteran Journalist and the immediate Past President of the Northern Regional Branch of the Ghana Journalist Association(GJA) Mr. Alhassan Imoro, has entreated journalists to provide information that will help empower readers make informed choices and decisions.
“On the media landscape today ,what we see is that instead of focusing on the social significance of news, there is the tendency on the part of journalists to politicise, personalise, trivialize and dramatize social processes by failing to link polices, processes and actions with events, happenings and outcomes”, he said.
Mr. Imoro said this at the opening of a three day workshop on “Decentralisation and the Media” for media practitioners and local government functionaries in the Upper East Region, organised by the Institute of Local Government Studies in collaboration with the German Development Service (DED).
Topics discussed were Civic Journalism and Reporting, Peaceful Electioneering and Democracy in Ghana, Mechanism for Enhancing voice, advocacy, representation and free flow of information within the local government system, Ethics and Values in Local Governance: the role of the Media and District Assembly and Civil Society Organisations as partners in Peace Building and Development.
He said that most media practitioners tend to focus their reportage on events as one-off opportunities for news stories, adding that the daily routine where reporters are invited to cover events has the tendency of overburdening reporters with less time to pursue stories beyond graphic images and meaningless statistics.
“Since event-focused reporting looks at an event and not the underlying issues which need addressing, one wonders what stories of substance or context these reporters can come out with that can have an impact on the lives of the people”.
Mr. Imoro noted that in such situations, event organisers only get very scanty publicity since they cannot influence what was reported or ensure that their activities are highlighted the way they want their stories to be told.
He advised practitioners to play a watch-dog and facilitating role instead of skewing their concentration in favour of political issues and discussions to the neglect of real developmental issues.
The Director of the Tamale Campus of the Institute of Local Government Studies Dr. Callistus Mahama said that the purpose of the workshop was to re-enforce the roles and responsibilities of the media and civil society in advocacy and representation at the local level.
He noted that Government investment in the decentralisation process has not achieved the much anticipated results, saying as partners in the development the Media has been identified as a powerful medium through which much could be achieved.