Journalism must prioritise public interest over attention — Kwesi Pratt

Veteran media practitioner and Managing Editor of The Insight, Kwesi Pratt Jnr, has urged media organisations and journalists not to reduce journalism to a contest for attention.

He said the duty of journalists was to establish what the public needed to know.

Speaking at the 77th anniversary symposium of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) in Accra last Wednesday, Mr Pratt, who is also the Founder of Pan African Television, said journalism must be guided by professional judgement in an age when digital platforms often reward attention with controversy, outrage, and sensationalism.

“The journalist’s task, however, is not simply to maximise attention, but to determine what the public needs to know,” he stated.

The veteran journalist stressed that speed should not override accuracy in the digital era, adding that being first to publish did not guarantee impact.

“A journalist could be the first to publish a story and still be wrong, while another journalist could publish later and produce the most important story of the day. The internet rewards speech. Journalism requires judgment,” he added.

Mr Pratt urged media organisations to uphold the professional benchmarks that distinguished journalism from general online content and to resist pressures from digital immediacy that compromised those standards.

He added that the central challenge for contemporary journalism had shifted from information access to the verification of truth within an oversaturated information environment.

Mr Pratt argued that media credibility hinged on five pillars: accuracy, verification, fairness, courage, and investigative scrutiny of influential persons and institutions.

Symposium

The 77th GJA anniversary symposium was on the theme “GJA at 77: Building on our legacy, advancing ethical journalism, and shaping the future of digital media”.

It drew many high-profile speakers from the media and related fields.

Other speakers included the Chairperson of the National Media Commission (NMC), Professor Akua Opokua Britwum, the Director-General of the National Communications Authority (NCA), Rev. Edmund Yirenkyi Fianko; the UNESCO Representative to Ghana, Edmond Moukala, and also featured a panel discussion.

Shaping public consciousness

Mr Pratt said Ghana’s journalism tradition was deeply rooted in the country’s political and democratic development, noting that the media had historically played a significant role in shaping public consciousness.

He said the GJA, established on August 15, 1949, as the Africa Press Association, emerged at a time when the Gold Coast was undergoing significant political transformation.

He said the press was never merely an observer of Ghana’s history but had been an active participant in the country’s struggle for self-determination.

“History matters, and it reminds us that journalism in Ghana did not begin as a profession concerned only with reporting what happened yesterday,” he said.

Mr Pratt said preserving that legacy required journalists to continually examine whether the profession was adequately serving its democratic, social, and national responsibilities.

He further drew attention to the 1992 Constitution, which guaranteed the freedom and independence of the media while also assigning it the responsibility of holding government accountable to the people.

“Press freedom without responsibility can become reckless, and responsibility without freedom can become submission,” he cautioned.

Mr Pratt further interrogated the impact of ownership, financing, advertising and political affiliations on editorial autonomy, contending that the absence of state censorship did not equate to freedom from external pressure.

He said media houses could not demand fearless journalism from journalists, while ignoring the economic and professional conditions under which they worked.

He criticised some TV stations for demanding a minimum number of Facebook followers from prospective presenters before offering them jobs, saying the practice of using social media popularity as metrics for employment undermined professional standards and marked a complete affront to journalism as a profession.

The veteran journalist, therefore, urged media establishments to reconsider such criteria.

“I know some television stations. You don’t get employed as a presenter if you don’t have a certain number of followers on Facebook.

That is a complete affront to all of our standards, and they should bow their heads in shame.

They are contributing significantly to undermining our credibility,” Mr Pratt said.

Reassessing coverage

The publisher and press freedom advocate also tasked Ghanaian media institutions to reassess representation in national news coverage.

He observed that coverage disproportionately featured state officials, corporate executives, and other institutional authorities, whereas key segments of society, including farmers, market women, fishermen, educators, health workers, unemployed young persons, and communities, received inadequate and episodic attention.

Mr Pratt added that the inclusion of ordinary citizens in the news should not be limited to moments of disaster.

“These people are not merely a background scenario to the national story. They hold the country in place,” he said.

He urged journalists to recover what he described as “the responsibility to listen and not only the ability to speak.”

He said journalists must pay greater attention to citizens who did not hold press conferences and whose experiences are often reduced to economic statistics.

“If journalism is serious about telling the people’s story, it must go where the people are,” Mr Pratt stressed.

For his part, the GJA President, Albert Kwabena Dwumfour, called for mutual commitment between journalists and leadership of the GJA to jointly uphold the standards that sustained media credibility.

He said the association must be a source of professional development, guidance, and protection for journalists, but that responsibility “must work both ways.”

“A journalist should be able to look to the GJA for professional development, guidance when new challenges emerge, and support when the legitimate work of journalism is threatened”.

“But the association cannot defend the credibility of journalism if journalists themselves are unwilling to uphold the standards that make that credibility possible,” he stated.

Mr Dwumfour said the GJA leadership was the “custodian, not owner” of the institution and had a duty to strengthen it for the next generation.

For 77 years, he said, the GJA had defended press freedom, advocated for journalists to work without fear or intimidation, and organised training to improve capacity across the country.

The GJA president urged members to embrace ethics as the association navigated challenges posed by digital media and AI.

Mr Dwumfour paid tribute to past executives and also acknowledged current national and regional executives for their hard work.

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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.