By Morkporkpor Anku
Accra, Nov. 12, GNA – Mr Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, the Minister of Information, says Ghanaians are committed to free, plural media environment and discourse for national development.
He said this was a necessity, “if we are to find and promote the best ideas, which will undergird a strong democratic State delivering an improved quality of life for her people”.
Mr Oppong-Nkrumah said this at the graduation of Bloomberg Media Initiative Africa (BMIA) Financial Journalism Training (FJT) Programme for Intake 1 and Intake 2 delegates in Accra.
The delegates include 46 graduates for Intake 1 and 42 graduates for Intake 2. It comprised 34 per cent females and 66 males.
Launched by Mike Bloomberg in South Africa in 2014, the Bloomberg Media Initiative Africa, is a pan-Africa programme designed to accelerate the development of a globally competitive media and financial reporting sector to promote transparency and accountability in Africa to enhance the quality of financial coverage and the availability of reliable and timely data on the continent, and support initiatives contributing to the vitality of community media.
Funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, with support from Ford Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the Financial Journalism Training (FJT) is the BMIA’s signature programme developed to increase the pipeline of skilled financial journalists and analysts embracing a data-driven journalism culture across Africa.
The FJT Programme provides journalists with training to enhance their financial and business reporting skills and knowledge.
The Minister said for that to happen, the persons leading and shepherding discourse in the media space ought to be well educated on the subjects they were shepherding public discourse about.
He asked media practitioners to be firm on the ethics of the profession and deep on the emerging matters in the practice of the trade.
Mr Oppong-Nkrumah said that required that the society that claimed it wanted a strong democracy and high quality journalists to serve it, must be interested in funding the capacity enhancement of its journalists.
He said the society and its stakeholders, who benefited or were most hurt by the quality of journalism or the lack of it, must continuously invest in the training of journalists.
He said the media and journalism frontier required collaborations for impact hence the partnerships between Bloomberg, Strathmore Business School, University of Ghana Business School and the Ghana Institute of Journalism to train more economic and financial journalists.
“For you the graduating class, we will be disappointed if your personal work and indeed the composite output from the industry does not show any signs of improvement after this significant investment in you,” he added.
GNA