Government asked to retool state media with technological devices

Government has been advised to invest in the development of Information Technology (IT) infrastructure for the state media to enhance their efficiency and improve communication between government and the people.

"We are in the information age and I believe such investment has become imperative to put the state media agencies in a better position to compete favourably with their contemporaries in the advanced countries," Ms. Xianghe Ling, Administrator, Cover News, a subsidiary of Sichuan Newspaper Industry Group, a leading media organization in China has urged.

She said this when some Ghanaian media professionals visited her outfit as part of a month training in modern trends of Journalism facilitated by the Ministry of Information and the China International Publishing Group (CIPG) Training Center, sponsored by the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China (MOFCOM).

Ms Ling said it was important that government information kept flowing with regular feedback from the people thus the need to strengthen the state media to rally the people for purposeful rapid socioeconomic development.

She said government information ought to reach the underprivileged at the countryside to keep the citizenry abreast with developments in the country and reiterated the need for ICT support for the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) and the Information Services Department (ISD).

Ms Ling said the Chinese Central Government for instance was currently embarking on an Artificial Intelligence (AI) programme to use robotics for news gathering in hard-to-reach areas of China.
She said the initiative was part of a comprehensive plan by government to expand the scope of information dissemination and ensured that people at the countryside were carried along.

Mr Kofi Ohene Benning, Acting Director in-charge of Human Resource at the Minstry of Information, who led the media team, indicated that since Ghana's independence in 1957, the three main agencies under the Ministry - GNA, GBC and the Information ISD had spearheaded information dissemination to help educate the people on development issues.

The Cover News Newspaper was established in 2015 by the Chinese Government to provide up-to-date information on development issues to the masses via online.