The pioneer of private broadcasting in Ghana, Dr Charles Wereko-Brobby has said the ‘soli’ joke made on Broadcaster Paul Adom Otchere by financial analyst Sydney Casely-Hayford and President of Policy think tank – IMANI Ghana – Franklin Cudjoe, was a bad one.
A livid Adom Otchere called into Citi FM’s current affairs show on Saturday to express his outrage after his attention was drawn to “sarcastic” comments by the two gentlemen about how much President John Mahama gave him as ‘soli’ after his recent one-on-one exclusive interview with the first gentleman of the land.
Soli is the name given to money offered journalists by event organisers after covering their programmes. Its propriety has become a subject of both academic and professional debate since the UK High Commissioner to Ghana, Jon Benjamin said at a recent IMANI-Ghana dinner that: “Isn’t covering the news actually their job to start with? And if they aren’t paid sufficiently to do so, isn’t that an issue between them and their employer rather than our, or anyone else’s problem?” He wondered how the same ‘soli’-taking journalists could ascribe to themselves the moral right to expose corruption in society.
“…If those journalists who pride themselves on reporting corruption in others, then ask for unofficial payments themselves, isn’t that just a touch hypocritical?”
“An event or a story is either intrinsically newsworthy or it isn’t. It doesn’t become newsworthy because someone has paid for it. That isn’t journalism: it’s advertising, and advertising is perfectly legitimate in itself, of course, but it is a different professional activity,” Benjamin observed.
Reports say Adom Otchere, who was a guest at the dinner publicly expressed disagreement with Benjamin. He later expressed those disagreements in a Radio interview. Wading into the matter, Dr Wereko-Brobbey told Kwadwo Asare Barfour Acheampong (KABA) on ASEMPA FM’s afternoon political programme Ekosii Sen that the soli aspersions and insinuation cast against Adom Otchere “shouldn’t have happened.” It was a “bad joke”, he said.
Commenting on the practice itself, Tarzan, as Wereko-Brobby is known said: “Demanding soli is not a good thing to do. It is almost becoming part of the culture of the country.”
He observed that it has become a problem in the profession, even though he acknowledged that it is a few journalists who are involved in the practice of demanding soli.
The former CEO of power producer Volta River Authority (VRA), however, noted that the problem is as a result of poor remuneration of journalists by media owners.
“Soli is an avenue for making ends meet” for some journalists who are not paid at all, he added. According to him, event organisers also feel compelled to dish out soli to journalists because they fear their events will not receive media attention without it.
Tarzan proposed that the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA) and the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) liaise with the National Media Commission (NMC) to come up with rules that ensure that media owners who do not pay their Reporters well get banned.
He also proposed that a minimum wage be set up for journalists of different levels to reduce the temptation of taking soli. He said the unacceptable practice has become a desirable practice which has become a big problem.
