Journalism must play a vital role in helping Africa overcome it’s three great challenges: peace, democracy and development, according to International Federation of Journalists Secretary General Aidan White.
His call for stronger ethics in journalism, delivered to a media audience in Ghana, could apply equally to journalists in many parts of the world. This report, by Edmund Smith-Asante, first appeared on the website of Ghana Business News.
The Secretary General of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Aidan White, has stated that journalism is not about freedom of expression, but rather about constrained expression.
He said a good journalist must note that journalism is actually a distinct form of expression, reminding journalists that they are not in the business of freedom of expression.
“Journalism is not about freedom of expression; journalism is about restrained, constrained expression. Because journalists must tell the truth, be independent and make themselves accountable,” Mr. White encapsulated.
He made his statements at the 15th Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) Awards in Accra. The theme for the awards ceremony, which saw 31 journalists being awarded with 33 awards and five personalities receiving honorary awards, was Unethical Journalism and Corruption in The Media: A Danger to Democracy.
Mr White said that “freedom of expression is the capacity of anyone who owns a computer, who owns a telephone, who owns any form through which they can disseminate their opinion when they want and how they want.”
But journalism must go further, he explained, to make it distinct from bloggers and from others who are used as an excuse to attack the fabric of journalism. Mr White said he viewed citizen journalism as a nice cliché, but that in the real world we need informed, committed journalists, professionally guided by standards and not the desire to promote their own ego.
And while he stressed the importance on honouring good journalism, he warned: “There are ethical challenges facing us in the media and that ethical challenge is felt very strongly here in Africa.”
Mr White added that it is important to create the professional and social conditions to enhance good journalism, in order for it to fulfil it’s duty to the nation. In his view, journalism and an independent media had a vital role to play in helping Africa overcome the three great challenges of peace, democracy and development.
'If your media is corrupt, your democracy is fatally flawed,' Aidan White told the Ghana Journalists Association award winners. (Mr White is pictured at a recent UK conference. Flickr photo by Jens Astrup / playthegame.org)
“In the struggle for peace, we need tolerance, and journalism must lead the struggle for tolerance,” he said. “In the struggle for democracy, we need pluralism. Journalism must ensure that all voices – majority and minority - are heard if democracy is to function.”
The IFJ leader continued: “In the struggle for development, media and journalism must scrutinise the exercise of power and expose corruption wherever it exists, because corruption is corrosive, not just to development, but to democracy itself.”
And he called on the African media to promote transparency by employing high ethical standards: “If your media is corrupt, your democracy is fatally flawed,” he said.
Mr White also lamented the levels of poverty in journalism, with too many journalists being exploited and badly paid. It is vital that journalists are given decent pay, he said – a statement that drew applause across the State Banquet Hall.
“If you do not have journalists who are respected for what they do, and who are rewarded for the good work they do, then you will never have the democracy that you need to serve the democracy that you wish to keep,” said Mr White.
He then spoke of the importance of a new campaign, led by the GJA, IFJ and African Federation of Journalists (AFJ), to raise the standards of ethical journalism.
He strongly supported the campaign’s aims to build a new respect in society for good journalism; journalism that served the public good. Part of the campaign, he said, is about building new partnerships with civil society, government and for all those who are genuinely interested in creating societies that are free, confident and strong.
Paying tribute to the 31 journalists who had been nominated for awards, he said the award ceremony was significant, not only for journalists in Ghana, but also for journalists in Africa, since it was celebrating the journalism that both Ghana and Africa needs.
All 31 award journalists received certificates, plaques and a laptop computer, while the honorary awardees received certificates.
The recipient of this year’s GJA/P.V. Ansah Journalist of the Year Award, sponsored by Unilever was Samuel Agyeman of Metro TV.
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Well said Aidan White. To many people working as journalists in developing countries are like a drunken man at an Oktoberfest in exercising what they believe to be is a license to say anything.
Considered, constrained, informed, (relatively) unbiased expression that does not overly slow the evolution, maturing, or changing of an area where journalists work is key. As too is the ability to resist corruption and to sometimes write what authorities or powerful people don’t want to read.