CHAPTER 10: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION(S) & RECOMMENDATIONS 199-208
1.9 Significance
A free press is one of the most efficacious instruments to promote good governance and external controls on administrative corruption (Camaj, 2002:22). This research is expected to go beyond the debate on legal and political dimensions of „government-media‟ relations and dwell extensively on the economic domain using content analysis to determine who funds the operations of the media through the placement of adverts into the print media, specifically newspapers. It has long been perceived that governments tend to be the biggest advertiser (McQuail, 1992:135). However, with the springing up of businesses in the banking and telecommunication sectors amidst recent exploration of Ghana‟s oil resources, all of which allow corporate entities to become important funders of newspapers through advertisements, it has
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become necessary to examine the funding patterns so as to be able to deal with the subject of editorial autonomy in this twenty-first century. As James Curran (2002:150) put it, “advertisers can also exert a direct influence by supporting media which offer a conducive environment for their products or politics, and withholding support from those who do not conform”. By mapping out the proportions of funding from government on one hand and business enterprises on the other, this work is expected to show the relationship between media financing and media independence using content framing and agenda-setting to determine editorial independence. It sets the platform to determine who funds the media most in Ghana, government or enterprises, as a pre-requisite to better propose a panacea to issues of media operations and its concomitant external influence. Space is given to the role of media owners as strategic partners in issues of funding.
Moreover, the study considers whether the media has diversified its operations.
Diversification in this study is distanced from the traditional debate of assessing the pluralistic (diversity) views of media consumption but will be dealt with in the context of revenue generation beyond the media industry. This move is expected to suggest strategies to lessen if not to eradicate the over-reliance on a specific source of accruing income within the media industry with its tendency of subjecting the media to huge editorial influences. Most countries spell out press freedom provisions in their Constitutions but in practice it is not as functional as expected (Kanyongolo, 1996). The research investigates beyond provisions in the Constitution and the question of whether those laws are enforced with respect to media independence and how fairly. The research also hopes to conceptualise „self-inflicted influences‟ which is to what extent media‟s own behaviour, through the observance of its ethics, standards and professionalism, impacts on their freedom is explored using qualitative approach. It is for the above reasons and many more that twenty years after the adoption of the 1991 Windhoek Declaration on “Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press”, Gwen Lister (2011:49) argued that though there has been some headway, more needs to be done and thus the necessity to regularly sensitise the political class and other related bodies to create a conducive environment for media to thrive freely. Finally, this work intends to develop a „media workflow model‟ that encapsulates economic, legal, political and ethical impacts on the subject of media independence.
22 1.10 Thesis structure / organisation
This thesis is composed of ten chapters. Chapter one delves into the introduction of the study that discusses background issues related to the major Ghanaian republics [First, Second, Third] with emphasis on the Fourth Republic, and also gives a brief explanation of how the media fared under each administration. It presents some successes achieved under the Fourth Republic due to constitutional provisions that gave room to some liberalisation as well as describes some of the shortcomings in terms of stifling media freedom. Finally, an overview of media funding is given with respect to the Ghanaian situation. The chapter spells out the objectives and research questions, delimitation and significance of the study.
The second chapter reviews the related literature on media independence so as to present a formidable argument on the problem. Issues discussed include; freedom of expression as propounded by authors like Milton and others to lay a base for the work; and media freedom concepts and definitions within the frames of legal, political and the economic environments.
Systems of governance are discussed with an emphasis on democracy as an institution since this is indistinguishable from determining the subject of media independence. The relationship of media within society is also given space as a means to expanding on the role of the media in a given society while bringing up issues of media ethics and professionalism, accountability and responsibility. The issues of advertising, media funding and the structure of the media market are explored in this chapter. Space was also given to ownership, regulation, content and consumption, ideology among others.
The third chapter explores literature further, with a focus on the print media landscape of Ghana. It paints a picture of the national economy of the country, history of the print media, geographical distribution of print media, media regulatory bodies/associations (National Media Commission (NMC) / Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) / Private Newspapers Publishers Association of Ghana (PRINPAG), regional media organisation and international protocols, and a survey of media laws. As part of chapters two and three, discussion on the chosen theoretical framework have been carried out on political economy in order to further unearth issues of media funding, regulation, economic and market tendencies, ownership
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and controls, globalisation and liberalisation to establish the extent of influences on the media within the Ghanaian context.
Chapter four presents a detailed description of research methodology and methods. The study employed an exploratory mixed-research approach through the use of content analysis and interviews thus making both qualitative and quantitative tools ideal for data analysis. Space in this chapter has been given to sampling procedures, issues of reliability, validity and ethical considerations, production of coding instruments, instructions and training of coders. Data collection sources have been visited and discussed appropriately. To be able to discuss data collected from interviews conducted and deal with „framing‟ and „agenda-setting‟
from the content analysis exercises, thematic analysis was used to thematically give meaning and direction to the work. Microsoft Excel Version 2010 and Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) Version 21 were the software applications the researcher used to organise data captured from headlines, news and advert placements in selected Ghanaian newspapers. Finally, limiting factors of the entire research were spelt out.
Chapters five, six, seven, eight and nine of the study presents the research results / findings and discussion. The results analysed of the extent legal, political, economic and professionalism issues impact on media independence within the Ghanaian print media context and were reported in tabular, graphical and thematic / narrative formats.
The final part of this work (chapter ten) includes the summary, conclusion and suggestion(s) to enhance further research.
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CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW 2.0 Introduction
This chapter reviews literature related to the issues of media independence with emphasis on Ghana‟s Fourth Republic. Though global perspectives of media independence issues have been incorporated in this work, in Africa, discussion has been confined to the Anglophone Sub- Saharan region chiefly due to language barriers. The study sets out to assess independence editorially from the perspectives of media funding, tagging advertising as the revenue source, and other variables including ownership, regulations, exploring standards/professionalism and issues of diversification in media operations. It discusses the roots of contemporary media, the concept of freedom, definitions of media independence. The chapter identifies previous studies covering advertising as a revenue source and media market structures. It also explores the media and society nexus, considering issues of accountability and social responsibility, media freedom and governance systems (democracy, authoritative, socialist), media ownership and controls. The next section, a sub-chapter of this literature review presents the foundation of print media in Ghana, geographical distribution of Ghana‟s media resources, some local and international regulatory bodies and advocacy groups / protocols that impact on the media in Ghana, and concludes with a brief survey of media laws within the Fourth Republic. Lastly, a survey of the political economy theory ends this chapter explaining its appropriateness and how it serves as a formidable base to build this work on due to its many facets of media funding, ownership, regulatory/legalities, political, governing systems and arms of government (legislature, executive and judiciary).
The media landscape has witnessed changes which has broadened the reference scope from only printed press to the word „press‟ where, in the realm of the media profession, it is still used conventionally to include other media forms (McQuail, 1990:111). Zelizer (2004:26) buttressed McQuail‟s stance when she recorded that „medium‟ has been used to refer to newspapers in the eighteenth century and it is with the advent of broadcasting in the twentieth century did the term „media‟ assume its plural form. Based on these positions, the following
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terms will be used interchangeably in this study: Press, Media; Media Independence, Editorial Independence; and Media Freedom and Press Freedom / Expression.