Ghanaian media shun development news

Contrary to public perception that the print media in Ghana devote much space to political news than any other issue, a research by the Centre for Media Analysis, (CMA) has revealed that the media gave more coverage to human interest news last year.

Out of a total of 58433 news stories that were published by the media, 10135 were human interest issues, representing 17%. Political news figure stood at 6741 indicating 12% while developmental category had 2316 indicating 4 %.

A release issued in Accra by the Centre for Media Analysis (CMA), an independent corporate Media Research and Monitoring company revealed that the state owned print media gave the highest coverage to human interest stories publishing 4035 stories. It however states that developmental stories recorded a lower number of 785, representing 3%.

For the entire twelve months the State-Owned print media published 23021 news stories while the private print media printed 35412.

?It is also astonishing to note that agriculture, which is key to Ghana?s development, received 1053 coverage (2%), out of 58433 news stories published in the year under the review.?

The CMA urges the Ghanaian print media to devote extra attention to developmental and agricultural issues.