Scandal Rocks GJA Awards?

The 13th Ghana Journalist Association {GJA} Awards which recently under the distinguished chairmanship of His Excellency Blay Amihere, Ghana’s ambassador to Cote D’Ivoir and patronized by the Vice President Alhali Aliu Mahama, with the Chief Justice Her Ladyship Justice Theodora Georgina Wood as the special guest of honour could not produce any journalist of the year.

Though about 10 journalists were awarded in 10 different categories for their meritorious services to mother Ghana, the organizers say in their view none of them excelled enough to be crowned with the envious title of journalist of the year 2008. This accession has however generated tense debate among the general public as well as practitioners of the inky fraternity casting dark clouds over the kind of journalistic standards we have in the country today.

One would be tempted to agree with the organizers when they say that any body crowned as journalist of the year represents the face of the profession in the country at a particular moment, and indeed this cannot be put any better.

However, precedents before and after the just ended event of the association suggest that all did not go well and that the outcome could have been better.
Concerns have been raised about the low publicity given to the receiving of nominations for the awards while many industry practitioners have complained that they did not even know nominations were opened. “All we heard was that the list of names shortlisted for the awards were out, so we ask, from what list did they do the short listing, what was the criteria used in the short listing?” asked an aggrieved reporter from one of the private media houses.

The organizers, GJA, have also been asked to answer or explain reasons why no body from any of the numerous private media houses doted all over the country was able to win a single award. Curious minds say they suspect foul play and opined that the whole thing is an attempt to deny somebody of a national honour. To the accusers something is not right and for which they are calling for an independent probe into the GJA awards.

Ghanaimage has it on authority that the winner of the best reporter in the print category, Mr. Innocent Appiah, of the Ghanaian Times newspaper was recommended by the awards committee because his work had impressed them, however, out of the blue came an “order from above” ordering that the gentleman should not be given the title. No explanation came with this order.

Though it was announced at the event that there were no winners for some categories such as best feature for radio and television among others it is alleged that the order that denied Appiah his title also insisted that some names be taken off the list ”And the irony of it all is that the order came at a time when it was too late to re-organize anything.” Our source lamented.

Even though the president of the association, Mr. Ransford Tetteh announced during the 15th anniversary celebration of the Parliamentary press corps that the association had decided to include parliamentary reporting category in this year’s event to encourage parliamentary democracy in Ghana it was evident that no such category was announced during the. Members of the corps in an interview with ghanaimage expressed their disappointment at the GJA saying “We had sacrificed ourselves with the expectation that for once one of us will be walking home with a plaque but as you can see our hopes never materialized”

They hoped that the GJA is not being manipulated by any political authority to its advantage especially in this election year because such a scandal will spell doom for Ghana’s fragile democracy.
So who is influencing the GJA awards? Is it a political or social influence that denied Appiah and others their awards? Or is it simply a show of super power by some power drunk group of individuals. Posterity stands the judge…………….

Meanwhile a group calling itself the Progressive Journalists Union {ProJUG} has also expressed its disappointment at the GJA’s inability to produce an overall journalist for this year.

The union is of the view that Ghana abounds with a lot of quality journalists and that it is time the GJA as an umbrella body do more to encourage the practitioners to perform better. The President of ProJUG, Mr. Baafuor Kwadwo Asare, said his group is organizing an alternative award system to honour hard working journalists in the country. “Our awards will be called All Journalists Awards and it will not be discriminatory, we shall be open, free and fair.” He stated