Hungry watchdogs; Would media perform effective guard duties?

The remuneration of local journalists has taken centre stage once again as Ghana joined the rest of the world to mark the 2023 World Press Freedom Day last Wednesday.

Behind the fine setting of the durbar in Accra where a former President of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), Gifty Affenyi-Dadzie, and the current President of the association, Albert Kwabena Dwumfour, eloquently cautioned the media against politicisation, the main concerns of the practitioners lay elsewhere.

To mark the occasion, a statement by the Private Newspaper Publishers Association of Ghana (PRINPAG) signed by its President, Andrew Edwin Arthur, said: “It is the desire of the association and its members that government reconsiders or re-strategises on its media policy, particularly the distribution of state-sponsored adverts, so as to benefit the majority of media houses in the country”.

It said the move “will go a long way in sustaining the Ghanaian media and saving them from eventual collapse”.

The PRINPAG statement, beyond serving a ceremonial ritual, underlined the state of the local newspaper space, with the space now threatened by financial difficulties.

Media landscape

While a few newspapers have folded up and left the vending space recently, some of those remaining appear to be there only in name rather than actual sales and impact.

But practitioners in the electronic and print, and private and state-owned are desperately among the poorest remunerated professionals in Ghana.

Local case

According to a 2023 report on the state of the Ghanaian media, put together by the Department of Communication Studies of the University of Ghana, in collaboration with the Media Foundation for West Africa, salaries in the Ghanaian media space “are generally quite low, with nearly half of the respondents (47 per cent) earning monthly incomes of, at most, GH¢1,000”.

Nearly half of that number (of respondents), the report said, “actually earn no more than GH¢500 monthly”.

“Salaries of respondents working in media organisations in the Greater Accra and Ashanti regions were much higher than those working outside these two regions. Up to 70 per cent of respondents (two of every three) working in the other regions earn no more than 1,000. This is irrespective of their roles (e.g. editor, reporter, presenter, etc.), which did not seem to make much difference in earnings, surprisingly. This is in sharp contrast to the 26 per cent (one in every five) Accra and Ashanti-based respondents earning a similar amount,” the report said.

“The silver lining, perhaps, is the finding that for a moderate majority of those who receive salaries, payments are relatively regular. Every two out of three respondents (65 per cent), typically, receive their salaries on time every month. 

“That said, it is of concern that as much as 30 per cent of them experience frequent delays in salary payments. This is even more so when one considers the generally low salaries reported. In other words, for a good number of respondents, they must contend with delays in payments, besides their relatively low remuneration,” the report further stated.

At a day’s African Journalists Leaders’ conference in Accra in 2021, the immediate past President of the GJA, Affail Monney, said the “slave wages of journalists” compromised their professional conduct, and deemed it as a threat to democracy.

The global theme for the 2023 World Press Freedom Day was: “Shaping a future of rights: Freedom of expression as a driver for all other human rights”, but Ghana commemorated the day on the sub-theme: “Freedom of expression: A driver for all human rights for Ghana’s development”.

Interviews

For the few journalists who spoke to the Daily Graphic, they preferred to lament their service conditions on condition of anonymity or remain silent altogether.

Otherwise, their lamentations bore the common strands of unimpressive salary levels, non-existent social security, irregular work schedule without the necessary compensation, and even irregular salary payment schedule.

For professionals expected to be the watchdogs for the society, it makes sense to link the remuneration of journalists to the impact of their work, especially in developing countries. 

Aside from their traditional roles of informing and entertaining the public, journalists are expected to speak truth to power and expose corruption in high places. 

But in a developing world, such as Ghana, journalists’ low wages, it is anticipated, may not empower them enough to be able to independently scrutinise persons of power. 

“Clearly, incomes in media organisations are low and can render media personnel vulnerable to influence and corruption,” the University of Ghana research report said in part. 

“The only way to make ends meet as a media practitioner in Ghana is to seek alternative incomes,” it added.

Intriguingly, Ghana declined further on the global press freedom index in 2023, released by Reporters Without Borders, dropping two spots from 60 in 2022 to 62 among 180 countries listed on the Index.

Before this, Ghana had dropped 30 spots from its 2021 position to rank 60 in 2022.

The latest ranking, according to the Chairman of the National Media Commission, Yaw Boadu-Ayeboafo, was induced, among various factors, by the welfare conditions of journalists in Ghana.

He said much as it was important that media owners addressed the issues of welfare of their staff, unionising journalists was also not necessarily the solution.

“The condition of service of journalists has implications critical to the professional and ethical conduct and demeanour of the journalist,” he said.