USE MEDIA TO SELL GHANA - WEREKO-BROBBY (P.16/17) 01-12-07

Story: Kofi Yeboah
THE Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana@50 Secretariat, Dr Charles Wereko-Brobby, has called on media practitioners to use the pluralism in the industry to sell Ghana, instead of presenting a negative image of the country to the outside world.
He said globalisation and the advancement in digital technology presented enormous opportunities for the media to sell Ghana, but, unfortunately, the recent media landscape had been saturated with murder, armed robbery, sodomy and other horrific stories on the front pages as though that was all Ghana could offer.
“We have a multitude of rags which are postulating to be newspapers. It’s a tragedy,” he remarked, expressing regret that even some respectable and established newspapers appeared to be descending into “gutter journalism”.
Dr Wereko-Brobby made those remarks at the Accra International Conference Centre (AICC) on Thursday when he delivered a lecture as part of activities marking this year’s Advertisers’ Week celebration.
The lecture, which was organised by the Advertisers Association of Ghana (AAG), in conjunction with the Ghana@50 Secretariat, was on the theme, “Selling Ghana through a global fish bowl: The challenges for the next 50 years”.
Dr Wereko-Brobby spent a greater part of his 60-minute lecture to establish his contention that the media were getting it all wrong as far as the national interest was concerned with the kind of negative stories they splashed on their front pages.
He said although the media might not be doing so with the intention of painting the country black, the impression those negative stories gave to foreigners was that Ghana was not a safe country to visit or do business in.
Dr Wereko-Brobby, who opened the floodgates for the establishment of private radio stations with the setting up of Radio Eye in 1994, said the increase in media houses was a good development that ought to be used to promote the country’s positive image.
He said the development of the media in Ghana at the moment was such that stories published on the front pages were picked by radio stations for discussion and also published on the Internet and other electronic networks.
Through that process, he said, stories published on the front pages were given wider publicity across the world and urged the media to use that opportunity to publish stories that would sell Ghana rather than those that would destroy it.
Dr Wereko-Brobby dismissed the assertion that sensational stories sold newspapers, contending that there were many positive stories that could sell the newspapers but, unfortunately, those stories were often buried in the newspapers.
“We don’t need to reduce newspapers to ‘man bites dog’ alone because it’s a fallacy that it sells,” he said, adding that although the crime wave in Nigeria, for instance, was higher than that in Ghana, newspapers in Nigeria focused more on “bread and butter” issues than sensational stories.
Dr Wereko-Brobby observed that the negative stories in the media were being published at a time when Ghana was trying to woo tourists and investors into the country.
He noted that Ghana could become a middle-income country in the near future if its tourism potential and positive values were promoted in the media.
Dr Wereko-Brobby said the perception of Ghana was far removed from what the media portrayed it to be and stressed the need to re-orient and balance media output through the concept of always seeing the cup as half full, instead of half empty.
He said development in the media landscape over the past 15 years posed a great challenge to advertisers and, therefore, advocated the creation of a synergy between those who sold the country through the media and those who sold it through classical advertising.
Dr Wereko-Brobby underlined the need for the country to develop its tourism attractions and ensure high standards to entice tourists into the country, pointing out that the country could not cover up its inefficiencies and inadequacies with advertising gimmicks.