CHAPTER 10: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION(S) & RECOMMENDATIONS 199-208
6.2 Discussion
This chapter delved into the degree to which ownership has impacted on the independence of the print media in Ghana. The study revealed that legal structures for the management of the state-owned media safeguard them from governmental control. Thus, controls of these media entities have been taken from the hands of government and assigned to NMC. The study argued that the state media is owned by the entire Ghanaian populace who are represented by the NMC to take decisions such as appointment of the Board, Managing Director and editors. Daily Graphic for instance is registered as a limited liability organisation and pays annual dividends to the state. The current management structures of state-owned print media in Ghana contrasts with the position of Ronnie Dugger, the founding editor of Texas Observer who remarked:
…keep in mind how the structure of corporate journalism works. The owner of the corporation appoints the CEO who appoints the manager who appoints the editors.
Those [dependent]… editors hire and fire the reporters and decide what stories the reporters are assigned to write, what stories they are not assigned to write, what the stories that are published say and how they say it, and what stories get killed (Miller 2002).
There is no direct ownership control in the state print media in Ghana because editors reserve the
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singular right to cover a story or not. The structure of management of state-owned print houses attempts to mitigate governmental influence, but the human elements mean that it has some flaws. It was evident from this study that government sometimes influences content of state- owned media through phone calls to editors to draw attention to unfavourable stories. As a result, the paper becomes careful when reporting on presidency and policy subjects. Related to the study of „who owns the media‟, it was evident that ownership of state media may not to be the best because government employs its power to the advantage of its outlet with the motive of twisting or stifling content published (Djankov, McLiesh, Nenova & Shleifer, 2001:5). The study identified two factors in this regard. Firstly, some state-owned media publish stories with undertones that favour government and secondly, such papers refrain from being critical on issues of government lapses.
The study showed that to some degree, the content of private media is an extension of owner‟s ideology and owners determine what is eventually published as news. Furthermore, the study established that material published as public interest content is rather the interest of the owner. Similarly, in his study of autonomy of journalists towards their superiors, Skovsgaard (2014:345) underscored: “[t]he concern is that news decisions will no longer be driven by a wish to serve the public interest, but rather by special interests – for example, political or economic”.
Owners have established private print media houses in Ghana for business / profit and political motives, and since owner interest is pursued at all times, the only alternative to non-compliance by editor/reporter would be to quit the job. Content that does not advance owners‟ course, irrespective of its importance, is cut off. A study in Argentina showed that in instances where media practitioners [reporters and editors] try to be critical, they are frequently obstructed by political and economic desires of owners (Pinto, 2008). Furthermore, in Brazil a study concluded that in the event where owners are in the helm of affairs in the newsroom to spearhead their political or economic desires, there is a high chance that public interest news is sacrificed for personal interests. This owner-mediated practice leads to skewed news and condenses the substance of content for society (Hallow, 2011:350-1). For instance in India and some other countries, some owners of newspapers appointed themselves as editors, or basically refuse to hire one. This makes the medium prone to carrying the views of the proprietor in news (Ross, 1999:18). Beyond ownership influence of news content, different avenues together fund and influence media. These include advertisers, shareholders, government and other entities, but the
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major motive of media owners is profit (Altschull, 1984:198; Djankov et al., 2001:5-6). The study revealed that the Ghanaian print media have stuck to the philosophy behind their establishments. However, they lack transparency to the extent that those with Boards do not factor in their decisions and pay low wages beneath the national ceiling.
In Ghana, ownership of print media impacts on diversity differently when comparing state to private media. The state print media have one owner who allows the publication of diverse content to cover all sectors of Ghana. The private print media on the other hand have large political ownership presence and most of them tend to narrow down issues of society to politics showing partiality to favour their political side, thus sacrificing diversity of content to include other spheres of society, so development journalism in not a priority. Opuamie-Ngoa (2010:11) for instance observed:
…objectivity as a journalistic paradigm had become antiquated. And when and where the media strives to perform, quite often it does so with some undertones, vested interests and
„power-plays‟ that smacks of the „master‟s voice‟. The continents‟ [i.e. African] media today seem to be at its best as proxies in the battle between rival political camps sowing hatred, cynicism, public apathy and divisiveness.
Ownership of some private print media in Ghana influences content in the direction of political diversity with respect to public views. This is consistent with the position that in Africa, tight legal frameworks were used to mute private-print outlets when they sporadically make efforts to publish diverse opinions that contradict the viewpoints of state-owned content (Aginam, 2005:125). With the intervention of private media into the market, competition was enhanced which enabled voters and citizens generally to be furnished with diverse and alternative opinions (Djankov, McLiesh, Nenova & Shleifer, 2001:5). However, in Ghana, they tend to cover similar issues in the media landscape and lack plurality. Thus, ownership often suggests some degree of actual or likely control which consequently serves as a limitation to plurality and diversity (Buckley et al., 2008). The study identified two forms of media diversity in the private sector. These are language diversity based on the native tongue of the locality to consume content and political opinion diversity. Beyond the necessity for diverse content, people choose specific media because it furnishes them with material consistent with their political
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beliefs and the need for information generally is so indispensable that society consumes what is published. This is consistent with a study which showed that “In most countries the origin of the press is to a large extent political. Newspapers were either owned by or affiliated to political parties. Editors and journalists were active in politics and audiences were loyal to the newspaper supporting their preferred party” (Hallin and Mancini, 2004).