GJA Thinks Big, Vendors Cry Foul

The Ghana Journalists Association has unveiled an ambitious project to develop a property donated to it by the government into the most advanced press centre in the West Africa sub-region.

The project is estimated at C5 billion, which is in the region of US$600,000. The President of the Ghana Journalists Association, Mrs. Gifty Affenyi-Dadzie unveiled the plans at an impressive launching ceremony, which attracted cabinet ministers, business executives, media educators and practitioners and representatives of other civil society groups.

A project fund has therefore been established to solicit the resources required for the realisation of the project. Ironically, the bulk of the Ghanaian media, especially the print media would find it extremely difficult at making any significant contributions due to their precarious cash flow situations. The state-owned Graphic Communications Group, the wealthiest media house in Ghana however unsurprisingly, almost immediately made a donation of C50,000,000, an amount most of the independent newspapers can only salivate at. Dr. Kofi Konadu Apraku, Minister of Trade and Industry however tantalisingly told journalists to look forward to government support in the development of a proactive, courageous and effective media in the country.

He said when the President made a campaign pledge to support the development of the media he meant business. "In the coming years the

NPP government would assist the media in every way possible to ensure that the media played its watchdog role effectively and efficiently."

Those were the sweet words the minister used to launch the fund for the project. The building is located on a 1.4 acre land adjacent to the Ghana Institute of Journalism. He made a down payment of 10 million cedis as government's initial financial contribution towards the project, saying that the President had signalled his support for the project before he left for Australia and would surely make a bigger donation on his return.

Several other donations made towards the project by corporate organisations, media houses and individual summed up to about 500 million cedis. An 18-member project committee drawn from the media, banking, estate development, mining sectors and other private individual professionals was inaugurated.

Meanwhile, a newspaper vendor who said he was talking for other vendors, has told The Accra Daily Mail that the business of selling newspapers is collapsing because the FM stations are killing the newspaper industry. He said many of his customers have now stopped buying the newspapers because they get all that they want from television and radio "reviews".

He pleaded with The Accra Daily Mail to "give us a front page story so that people will know what is happening."

Last month, the executive of the Private Newspaper Publishers Association of Ghana (PRINPAG) made similar complaints, but that did not abate the lengthy reviews by the radio stations.

With the newspaper vendors joining in, the time has perhaps come for the problem to be looked at in depth or else by the time the C5 billion International Press Centre is ready, many of the current crop of privately owned newspapers would be out of business having been muscled out by well-meaning but economically destructive reviews.