Why Ghana Media Watch?

I have written quite a number of blog entries about the media, but my most recent is perhaps the most incisive. In that post, I explain that:

The practice of journalism is in a very sorry state--despite the astronomical rise of the private press (yes, you could say that our press is free! (even too liberal at times!!) ), what with papers aligning themselves to political parties. Though that is nothing new, it went o the increase, especially in the second term of the NPP.

I do not think I have to say any more than that--except to say that we need to do a systematic monitoring and evaluation of the media. Initially, I believed that a monitoring of front pages of the newspapers was sufficient, but I believe that a more important thing to do is to also monitor the (morning) radio stations to listen how they report issues. I am challenged by the fact that I cannot listen to over twenty morning shoes every day, so I might have to do occasional monitoring.

Given that I cannot division myself into twice or more for that reason, I am going to limit the objective of this blog to three major points:

monitor & evaluate front pages / stories of both the private and state-owned newspapers, with a view to establishing which stories have impact on the development of the country

monitor & evaluate selected radio (morning) shows for content

provide regular media analysis of the extent to which journalists are using New Media (such as Facebook / twitter / blogging) to improve reporting for their news outfits.

So you might be wondering why this picture? It's from this week's Graphic Business, and is a story about some steps the government want to take to combat crime. It's not a bad article, and goes some way to explain what government has in store for Ghanaians. Many stories have done that--and will continue to do so, but the reason why I thought this was worthy of consideration was for the clarity and impact it will have on society. It's not a story just about a launch of some such things here or that, but a good feature piece.