THERE WILL BE INK - Initiative for Policy Dialogue

The rise of business-focused journalism is bringing with it a new crop of business and economicsfocusedjournalists. However, the majority of these journalists have had little formal training inbusiness and economics reporting save the training programs detailed in this report. Primarilybecause of the dearth of specialized reporters, all those journalists interviewed for this projectacknowledged that business and economic journalism has a long way to go in Ghana.Our researcher asked Ama Achia, a reporter with the public interest newspaper Public Agenda, if theGhanaian media is doing a sufficient job at covering business and economic matters. Her reply wasambiguous. “Yes,” she said, “in the sense that more papers are now specializing in business andeconomic issues, and that some papers like Public Agenda set aside more space for these issues,[but] no in that coverage is still focused on sensational issues, not substantive ones, such as thenational economy.” Many journalists repeated the view that the country’s appetite for news wasfocused only on entertainment and politics. Indeed, many journalists stated that the public’s lack ofinterest in such issues was the biggest impediment to business and economic journalism’s growth,and that the market for news required a fundamental shift if business and economic matters weregoing to get the attention they deserved.The private media’s dependence on advertising for revenue, as noted above, has had a pronouncedeffect on business and economic reporting, according to almost all of the journalists interviewed. Areporter with the Daily Guide, the largest private daily in Ghana, said that her paper avoided storiesabout their biggest advertisers for fear of disrupting an important income stream.In-depth reporting on business and economic matters also seemed to be rare, as most coverage fallswithin the realm of hard news and stories generated by press releases issued by businesses. Thus fewbusiness and economics feature stories or investigative reports are being produced in Ghana, whichmany journalists acknowledged as a significant weakness in economic and business coverage.Content AnalysisA basic content analysis of Ghanaian print media coverage of the extractive industries reveals a pressthat appears aware of the impact of the extractive industries on Ghana’s economy and society, but iseither unable or unwilling to report on these industries with the depth and substance that theydemand.Most print coverage of the extractives industries falls into two broad categories: promotional andpublic relations stories for the extractive businesses themselves, and critical stories that deride thesesame businesses for alleged abuses; the former being more common than the latter. Few articlesseem to cross this “praise/attack” divide by presenting a more comprehensive picture of theextractive industries in Ghana.Those articles which promoted the activities of the extractive industries range from press releasetypestories to company announcements to stories about the economic promise of the extractiveindustries, particularly in regards to Ghana’s new oil finds. Stories related to Ghana’s miningoperations are, of course, most frequent given that Ghana’s oil industry is only just getting started.Press release stories are newspaper articles that seem to be simply rewritten company press releases(and often are, according to journalists interviewed for this study). Many of these articles seem tooriginate from a mining company’s public relations department, such as Newmont, the American– 41 –