Disgrace to Journalism

News about Komla Dumor being the best Journalist of the year reached me as a bolt from the blue and in fact, this shows how morals and ethics are deteriorating in our dear motherland and it is such a shame. A journalist is someone who has had formal education in Journalism and has come out with a certificate, diploma or degree in the art but Komla has none of these and can thus not be classified as a Journalist. Can a person who has worked with a solicitor and learnt so much about law through his interaction with the solicitor be classified as a lawyer? the answer is a big no. Komla Dumor is a good presenter but he knows nothing about Journalism as he has no idea as to what the ethics of this art require.

Someone like Kweku Baako might not have been formally trained in a Journalism school but he can be considered as a Journalist because he has carefully studied Journalism on his own and hey! he can be compared with any of the prominent Journalists anywhere in the world. His fearless attitude is just what the Journalist is meant and taught to do. He fishes for information and he always comes out with what the public want to hear and know. GJA, had to declare some election results null and void and I understand some members still don't approve of the new President which brings out the politics in the GJA circles. The GJA will lose all its accreditation unless they prove that, they are a good and capable Association for Journalists.

There are so many people in the radio and television industry who say things without considering the consequences and how can such ones be classified as Journalists? In Ghana, corruption is the order of the day and had it not been that, most of these people would have been languishing in jails for their indescent utterances. It is time we draw a line between who a Journalist is and who a radio presenter is as these are two different things. Komla is a politician whereas Journalists are neutral so how can he be given this award which is meant for the JOURNALIST. As Abraham Lincoln said " you can fool some people all the time and all the people some of the time but you can't fool or the people all the time".

There might be people out there who always want to do things their way but that doesn't mean it is right and we will never sit down for the profession to be brought to disrepute at all. "The arc of the moral universe is long but bends towards justice" as Martin Luther King Jnr said and I believe it is time people in authority see and admit this as truth crushed to earth will always rise again. The award given to Komla must be taken back and given to a Journalist as Komla said time and time again that he wasn't a Journalist. When will we ever learn? It is a shame that what Marcus Garvey said in the past is still seen today and as he said " sometimes amonst people of ultramental slackness are people of the black race who do not dream and see visions in a sober practical way but as actuated by superstitions and this on the contrary has left the race dumped in the gutter of practical life".

As blacks, we want to see visions and dream in the sober practical way just like our white counterparts so please take this award back and let's start all over again as we have disgraced the art of Journalism and the Pan-Africanist ideology. Long live true democracy and objective Journalism