BBC praises Ghanaian journalists

Accra, Feb. 20, GNA - Judges of the West Africa category of the BBC Africa Radio Awards, on Tuesday praised radio journalists as the most developed and professional in the sub-region.

Professor Dora Nkem Akunyili, who chaired the panel of judges for the award said, "out of the more than 100 entries for the seven categories, entries from Ghana stood out as the most professional in terms of presentation, details and technical quality."

She made the remark at a press conference to announce the winners of the award in Accra. The award was the third and final of the regional heats as the first two, the Eastern Africa and Southern Africa categories had been held already.

Other judges on the panel, including Ms. Vera Kwakofi, Project Manager for the award and Bola Mosuro, Senior Producer and Presenter with BBC and Selase Kwawu, a student of the University of Ghana, also said they were proud of Ghanaian radio journalists for the quality of their entries.

They attributed the high quality of the entries from Ghana to the stiff competition in the radio market in Ghana, saying that kind of competition did not exist in other countries in the sub-region and entries from those countries were largely mediocre.

Out of the seven awards, Ghana won five. Joy FM, a local radio station won three awards; Radio Station of the Year, Local On-Air Campaign of the Year and Kofi Owusu of the same radio station won the News Journalist of the Year.

Citi FM, another local radio stations, won the New Radio Station of the Year and the Interactive Talk Show of the Year, being their Breakfast Show.

Ibukunluwa Sammi from Ray Power FM in Nigeria won the Young Broadcaster of the year.

The seventh award, which was the Sports Journalist of the Year was not awarded because according to the judges all the entries were sub-standard and could not meet the criteria.

Prof Akunyili observed that most of the sport entries had muffled voices, lacked clarity and the kind of detailed information necessary to sustain the interest of the listener.

She noted that unlike the television broadcaster, the radio broadcaster was handicapped since he or she had no pictures to support his or her report but had to use just the voice to create imaginative pictures in the minds of the listener.

"We also had problems with the intonation of most of the broadcasters who sent sports entries because most of them tried to sound western and in the process they sounded ambiguous, unclear and difficult to understand," she said.

Ms Kwakofi said the over-all BBC African Radio Journalists Award would be held on May 26, 2007 in Nairobi, Kenya.