THERE WILL BE INK - Initiative for Policy Dialogue

coverage of the oil industry is also somewhat guarded and perhaps informed by knowledge of oil’spredilection for trouble in West Africa. The Ghanaian Times, one of Ghana’s state-fundednewspapers, published a series of editorials in 2008 about Ghana’s prospect for oil production(“Benefits of the Oil Find,” “Preparing for the Oil Future,” and “The Oil Find”) that illustrated asense of the paper’s responsibility in covering the oil finds. The editorials made severalrecommendations to political leaders to ensure that the oil becomes a blessing and not a curse.However, overall, the oil discoveries and plans for production received surprisingly little coveragegiven oil’s importance to Ghana’s economic future. In the run-up to Ghana’s presidential electionsin December 2008, oil was rarely mentioned in articles about the race, despite the fact that theelection winner would also gain substantial control over how to manage Ghana’s new oil industry.Most articles about the oil industry concerned new discoveries and prospects; these would makefront page news. Rarely did newspapers publish substantial reports about the oil discoveries, muchless the contracts being written up in back rooms to determine prices and royalties that ultimatelydecide how much of Ghana’s oil wealth will stay in country. Several journalists interviewed for thisproject said there simply wasn’t much to report until oil production goes online in 2010.Rather, the best coverage of Ghana’s nascent oil industry is appearing in foreign newspapers andmedia outlets like The Financial Times and BBC. Many journalists interviewed expressed regret thatsuch reporting isn’t being done by Ghanaian reporters given that the oil frenzy is taking place intheir own country.Of the Ghanaian newspapers surveyed for this content analysis, the most substantial coverage of theextractive industries was found in the pages of Public Agenda, the Accra-based public interest paper.Public Agenda is funded by one of the main civil society organizations in the country, IntegratedSocial Development Centre (ISODEC). Public Agenda regularly publishes in-depth articles about themining industry (“Who Benefits from Ghana's Mining Laws?” 130 ), the oil sector (“Ghana Must Playthe Oil Game its Own Way” 131 ), and editorials on important topics like the resource curse (“Ghana:Experimenting with the Resource Curse” 132 ).While substantial in its coverage of the mining and oil sectors, Public Agenda is also openly biasedtowards presenting those perspectives not offered in the more mainstream press, with an emphasison the environment, gender issues, worker and human rights, and equitable economic development.Of course, openly subjective media outlets can still be important resources for news andinformation, particularly in a country like Ghana where the media is either unable or unwilling tocover certain stories.As a whole, Ghana’s print media coverage of the extractive industries is unimpressive. Coverage isgenerally insubstantial and skin-deep. Different perspectives on the mining industry are offered, forexample, but rarely do articles engage the totality of the issue at hand or evenly present both pro andcon arguments. In-depth investigative articles, crucial to monitoring an industry notoriously lacking130 Asks Ebenezer Hanson, “Who benefits from Ghana's mining laws?,” Public Agenda, 20 April 2009:http://www.ghanaweb.com/public_agenda/article.php?ID=13091.131 Frederick Asiamah, “Ghana must play the oil game its own way,” Public Agenda, 9 February 2009:http://www.ghanaweb.com/public_agenda/article.php?ID=12799.132 Dayo Olaide, “Ghana: experimenting with the resource curse,” Public Agenda, 9 March 2009:http://www.ghanaweb.com/public_agenda/article.php?ID=12919.– 43 –