By Elizabeth Larkwor Baah
Tema, July 28, GNA – Ms. Mary Ama Kudom-Agyeman, Executive Director, Media Platform on Environment and Climate Change (MPEC), has encouraged journalists to conduct themselves, stressing the need for self-respect and their sources of information.
She said acquiring information from stakeholders was difficult even with the availability of the Right to Information Act, hence the need for journalists to be tactical in pursuing what they want.
Ms Kudom-Agyemang was speaking at the Tema Ghana News Agency Regional Industrial News Hub Dialogue Platform, where she lamented that certain attitudes portrayed by some journalists in their attempts to get information for their stories and articles were unfortunate and uncultured.
That, she said, tends to degrade the profession.
“Even though we have the Right to Information Act, all the institutions, especially public institutions, still have strict orders. Previously, it wasn’t like that, and then sometimes it’s from us, the journalists,” she stated.
She encouraged journalists to also respect people’s decisions to speak off-record without bringing it into the public domain, stressing that it was inappropriate and unacceptable for journalists to report on issues they had been alerted not to bring out to the public.
She added that it was of high importance that journalists endeavoured to keep the standards of the profession high and do good reportage on information handed to them to convince stakeholders to be willing to give them the information needed.
She said: “Getting information from them required patience and tact, and journalists can sometimes be disrespectful. I met one, and I was shocked.”
She added that journalists could visit the official websites of institutions to cite press releases for their stories without any problem.
“Even if you don’t meet an individual there to take it to, you can cite it, but of course still read around and understand what you have to do,” she said.
GNA