SHOCKING? Dr Dzisah Says Media Can Endorse Political Parties

Dr Wilberforce Dzisah, Rector of GIJ

By Duke Tagoe

Dr Wilberforce Dzisah, Rector of the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ) has said that the media can openly declare its support for any of the political parties.

He said all human activity, including the practice of journalism, is governed by competing ideologies which seek to proffer alternatives to the national development, adding that since political parties were the vehicles designed to bring about those changes, the press could endorse those political parties it believed could bring about the radical and structural transformation their readers or electorate wanted to see.

He, however, warned that the freedom of the press to endorse political parties would amount to an exercise in futility if journalistic objectivity was lost and if reports were “slanted, jaundiced and tainted with the very ills for which we (the media) berate others.”

According to him, Edmund Burke, the British philosopher, parliamentarian, author and political theorist, noted, when he described the media as the fourth estate, that the powers of the media were immense and comparative to the other organs of government.

Dr Dzisah therefore, admonished the media to go behind the veil to establish a sense of legitimacy of the various presidential and parliamentary candidates and the political parties to the benefit of the voter.

In less than three months, Ghanaians will be trooping to the polls to elect either President John Mahama or Nana Addo Danquah Akuffo Addo of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), respectively, to lead the country. They will also be electing 275 parliamentarians into the Fifth Parliament of the Fourth Republic.

Dr Wilberforce Dzisah was speaking at a three-day workshop on Effective Election Reporting organized by the Ghana Institute of Journalism in collaboration with the United States Embassy at Sogakope in the Volta Region.

Editorial

WE AGREE!

There can be no compelling reason for Ghana to have a foreign coach for its national football team, the Black Stars.

Indeed there are many Ghanaian football coaches who are far better qualified than the so-called foreign coaches.

It is for this reason that fully agrees with Dr Nyaho Nyaho Tamakloe, former President of the Ghana Football Association (GFA) that it is time to say good bye to coach Avram Grants.

This coach has failed to bring about any significant improvement in the performance of the Black Stars and his general attitude to Ghana is repugnant.

We urge the Ghanaian football authorities to send Avram Grant home and to recruit a Ghanaian football coach for the job.