Journalists in Ghana don’t read – Prof Karikari

Former Executive Director of the Media Foundation West Africa, Prof Kwame Karikari, has chastised the media in Ghana over the lack of intellectual capacity to probe issues of national interest due to the lack of reading.

According to him, most journalists only depend on what they are taught in school for practice without realizing that there is more to the profession than that.

“A majority of our media people don’t read anything, therefore, they are unable to acquire the intellectual capacity to decern, analyze and to raise the necessary questions to authority,” he said.

“The training of journalism equips you with the skills, the technical expertise and also the ethics of the profession. Basically, journalism is an intellectual activity because it works with ideas and knowledge so journalists must acquire a lot of knowledge on their own outside the school by reading.”

He further noted that due to the lack of reading, the media in the country have become either propagators of the works of government or opposers who end up insulting personalities without the proper analysis of issues.

The renowned communications professional said “when a government is in power, you tend to see two things in the media, those that are simply replaying what government is saying and those that appear to be critical are not being critical. They are only oppositional and just being oppositional doesn’t require any intellectual finesse. Because they lack the intellectual refinement and analytical capacity, they easily resort to insults, abuses of the persons in office or the person they oppose”.

Prof Karikari made this comment in an interview with Rev Dr Kwabena Opuni-Frimpong on GTV’s ‘What is Next’.