Statement On GJA Award

THE Following is the statement of the GHANA NEWS AGENCY CHAPTER OF THE GHANA JOURNALISTS ASSOCIATION on the GJA Award of the Best Journalist of the Year 2001/2002

We, Members of the Ghana News Agency (GNA) Chapter of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) on this fateful day Sunday, August 24, 2003 do protest in very strong terms the choice of Mr Komla Dumor, a former Presenter of Joy FM for the 2001-2002 Journalist of the Year Award.

Without prejudice to the intellectual capability of Mr Dumor, we wish to state that the criteria used in arriving at the best Journalist of the season is speculative, improper and open to manipulation. Mr Dumor does some good interviews on radio, a fact that most people in Accra acknowledge but we must accept the fact that journalism goes beyond that. Besides it is a known fact that Mr Dumor ridicules and lampoons his guests.

We should first of all identify the profession called Journalism and try to separate it from commentary and mere talk on radio. We utterly reject the idea that the general public is given the mandate to select the Best Journalist award since even most people in the profession find it difficult to state what constitutes Journalism and this has been amply laid bare in the selection process of the awards committee.

We wish to state that we, as a Chapter do not recognize Mr Dumor as the Journalist of the Year and henceforth, shall not be part of any activity that would be organized now or in the future to celebrate the "sad face of Journalism"

We owe posterity our sincerity and would not be part of any attempt to belittle our cherished profession. It is a known fact that in the area of medicine or law, people who have been working in the theatres or chambers of renowned legal brains all over the world, never held themselves out as doctors nor lawyers. Not even if they worked there for 50 years!

We are very much appalled by the thinking of the Awards Committee in not being able to come out with a suitable winner. We thought all along, that they were out to do a good job. But suffice to say that they, not only failed in their task but also, insulted and degraded professional journalists in the process.

We also want to put it on record that, we the members of the GNA Chapter of the GJA will not recognize the winner and hope that our colleagues in the other Chapters would see reason in our stand in not allowing people to pass through the back door.

We wonder the kind of awards that would be conferred on other individuals who are already popular with the radio listening public, some of whom have failed to pass the entrance examinations into the Ghana Institute of Journalism. Signed

Chairman Samual Osei-Frempong
Signed
Secretary Gideon Asare Sackitey
General Secretary Ghana Journalist Association Accra.
Cc: Chairman Awards Committee.