Anglophone journalists attend meeting in Accra

Accra, Sept. 18, GNA - An Anglophone West Africa sub-regional meeting for journalists opened in Accra on Monday with a call on journalists to exploit the huge potential of the Internet to tell the African story to change the western stereotyping.

Mr Boakye-Dankwa Boadi, Chief Editor, Ghana News Agency, who made the call, also asked journalists to pursue Africa's development agenda by telling Africa's story in their own language.

"Let us report Africa, the African way. Let us play our role in making Africa a knowledge-based society," Mr Boadi said.

The two-day meeting being attended by 50 participants, including newspaper publishers, radio managers, editors, trainers and other media practitioners, is being organized by Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). The meeting dubbed: "Strengthening Africa's Media", is a consultation among West African media actors, institutions and organisation that support development.

It would identify priority issues and areas requiring support and propose initiatives and programmes to strengthen the media industry and its role in development in Africa.

Presenting a paper on, "Media Professional Practice-Challenges and Opportunities," Mr. Boadi mentioned the first challenge confronting practitioners as human resource capacity, which has resulted in many of the media houses recruiting half baked journalists with less or without practical job experiences.

He said some also engage people who have had no training whatsoever as presenters and disc jockeys and put them "before microphones at radio stations to spew out poison to the generality of the people. Ours is a society of garrulous and gullible people".

Mr. Boadi urged journalism institutions to acquire the required accreditation from the requisite national boards in order to produce products with certain calibre that would hold the tenets of the profession in high esteem.

He also expressed worry over low remuneration for journalists in the sub-region and said that should be improved upon by various employers. He asked NGOs and organisations to offer rebate for journalists to browse the Internet as well as establish caf=E9s where practitioners could easily access information and knowledge.

Alhaji Ibrahim Ben Kargbo, President of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists, said the issue of proper sourcing of stories was another challenge, where because ethically, journalists were under no obligation to reveal their sources hid under it to write things based on their own imagination instead of reporting the facts. He said journalists must strive to provide credible sourcing to their stories as well as to strive to serve the public interest in their reportage.

The meeting would treat topics like "Challenges of Media Ownership in West Africa Today,=94 93Media Training - Meeting the Challenges of Growing Needs Today=94 and 93Critical Perspectives on Media Support Organisations".

A case document would be developed to serve as the basis for a conference to discuss and propose ideas for financing of media in Africa.