In sports broadcasting, media personnel are the vanguards of the actors and the product, and through their responsible journalism or investigative reporting, they constantly and deliberately work to promote the industry. In the discharge of this critical responsibility, practitioners are mostly faced with the challenges of doing what is right. However, the media should be guided by ethics and standards.
On the Skyy Sports Show on Thursday, sports pundit Michael Asare Boadu went directly after the current generation of Ghanaian sports journalists, charging practitioners to wake up from their slumber and raise the bar. “Our current generation [of sports broadcasters and sports journalists in Ghana] are very lazy, [many bloggers and publishers] just copy and paste stories, they only change the headline, but wouldn’t even give credit to their source. If we don’t change, we can’t raise the bar”, he fumed
The noble profession has come under the lenses of many critics, who lash out at the disregard for standards and ethics in the discharge of line duties. A month ago, Mohammed Amin-Lamptey, a lecturer at the Ghana Institute of Journalism posted, “it’s imperative to say that our sports journalism profession is indeed under threat if a large section of those who are supposed to help hold our football administrators accountable have been compromised or are being cowed into submission through threats; as the watchdog in any democratic dispensation, journalists are expected to be independent, truthful, fair, balanced and minimize harm, where necessary in our journalistic works”.
Sounding very passionate, Michael Asare Boadu who is also the brands manager of Skyy FC said, “the Ghanaian journalist is always right but others are wrong, and that culture is killing the industry; look, the journalism industry [in Ghana] is more rotten than Ghana football, especially sports; the standard of sports journalism in Ghana is partly responsible for the state football finds itself in, and if as a media industry, our thinking and standards are high, we will pull football along”, he charged.
“There are so many reforms that have occurred in world football [which were] started by journalists; [but I ask:] what reform has the Ghanaian sports media initiated in the last 20 years”, the Skyy Sports pundit queried.
