Investigative Reporting Nosedives

The state of investigative reporting in the Ghanaian press has suffered a jolt. According a study by the non-profit organization, Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), there was a marked decline in the number of investigative stories carried by all sampled newspapers covered by the study.

The newspapers under study were the Ghanaian Chronicle, Evening News, Crusading Guide, Daily Graphic and Ghanaian Times.

The study sought to compare the level of investigative reporting in the newspapers against the years 2000 and 2001 - that is during the NDC and the first year of NPP administration.

For the breakdown, Graphic carried 2 and 5 stories for 2000 and 2001 respectively. Out of 8,635 stories analyzed in the Ghanaian Times, only 10 were adjudged investigative.

Sixty-one investigative stories were found out of 2,009 stories in the Chronicle. Out of 72 issues of the Crusading Guide and 120 issues of the Evening News sampled, only 17 and 14 investigative stories were found respectively.

In all, 109 investigative stories were found out of 24,559 stories contained in 625 issues of the five newspapers put together. It is evident from the report that the private media leads in investigating reporting.

The report also discovered that the media carried more investigative stories in 2000 under the NDC era than in 2001, under the NPP era.