By Franklin ASARE-DONKOH
A veteran journalist, Madam Tina Aforo-Yeboah, has been asking if the Ghanaian journalist has an independent life.
“Sometimes you sit back and ask yourself how free the media is and what the independent life of the journalist is like because sometimes you are just called by an editor to go and cover this or that without any clue,” she quizzed.
Speaking at a special roundtable panel discussion on the topic: Journalism –the whole story on GTV hosted by Mr. Kafui Dey, the veteran journalist, shared some horrifying experiences she and some journalists encounter in the line of duty.
“I remember, I was about seven months pregnant, and the editor walked into the newsroom, and I was left with only my news editor and I was asked to cover an assignment at Winneba in the Central Region immediately.
Without considering my condition, he said as a journalist, you should always be prepared like a soldier.
And in those days, the road was not even the vehicle we traveled with, it was only God that I didn’t have a miscarriage. Most of my female colleagues had miscarriages or other negative health complications for following or carrying out instructions by their superiors,” She recalled.
Madam Aforo-Yeboah also touched on some instances where both state and private media houses go to cover the same program and one media house reports entirely different things together from what took place and you wonder if they all covered the same program or not.
“Today, one could realize that there is a divide on the media front and the independence of the media is thrown to the dogs. We just don’t journalism as it was done years back,” She noted.
