IT is always a sign of humility not to blow one’s own horn but in the circumstances where nobody does that for you, you are forced to do so yourself. That is what we intend doing today by way of extolling the good performance of the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL) over the years.
At its annual general meeting (AGM) last Tuesday, stakeholders in the fortunes of the state-owned media praised the GCGL for its excellent performance in 2009 in spite of the unfavourable national and global economic conditions.
At the ceremony, a dividend of GH¢400,000 to the government was declared. For quite sometime now, the GCGL has been making substantial dividend payments to the government.
A few years back, the GCGL was the only state-owned enterprise that paid dividend to the government. The sterling performance of the GCGL could be a case study one day in the wake of the dwindling fortunes of most state-owned enterprises in the country.
Perhaps the decision of the framers of the 1992 Constitution to insulate the state-owned media from government control has made it possible for the company’s achievement so far because the board and management are free to run the organisation on pure commercial lines.
The lesson is that in trying to operate along pure professional and commercial lines, the newspapers in the company’s stable do not necessarily have to be hostile to the government of the day in order to make profit.
Indeed, they have opened the pages of the newspapers to the government to explain its policies and programmes to the people and at the same time offered a platform for alternative solutions to the country’s problems.
The achievements of the GCGL give credence to the school of thought that the government and the media need not be in adversarial relationship in order to play their roles effectively.
Article 162(5) of the 1992 Constitution charges that “all agencies of mass media shall, at all times, be free to uphold the principles and objectives of this constitution, and shall uphold the responsibility and accountability of the government to the people of Ghana”.
Therefore, the work of the state-owned media and the independent media is not mutually exclusive as they are all charged to ensure accountability and transparency in the governance system.
Maybe, the time has come for the other media organisations to learn from the Graphic model so that they can operate professionally but as a business and at the same time holding all public office holders accountable for their stewardship.
The role of the free press in any society is not in doubt; it is critical to the success of the country’s fledgling democracy and that is why it is required of all media practitioners to exercise media freedom guaranteed by the Constitution with responsibility.
The DAILY GRAPHIC believes that the threat to free expression and free press can only come from media practitioners themselves if they decide to practise the profession without due regard to their code of ethics.
It is a sad commentary that while media practitioners are ready to jump at the neck of public office holders to demand that they account for their stewardship, journalists do not want to be accountable to anybody.
And we think journalists should be reminded of the popular maxim in equity that “he who” comes to equity must come with clean hands. All that we are saying is that journalists need not be reckless in their reportage or adopt the attitude of ‘publishing and be damned’ to gain recognition in the society.
Journalists should, therefore, exercise their mandate with responsibility and serve the public good just as the newspapers in the GCGL stable have been doing all these years.
Kudos, GCGL, for contributing to national development.
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