Journalists challenged to engage in “enterprise journalism”

Ms Abena Yeboah, Assistant Lecturer, School of Communication Studies, University of Ghana, has appealed to media practitioners to engage in “enterprise journalism” to allow for more coverage of women sensitization issues.

     She said this format of story generation allowed for in-depth exploration of all angles to an issue, thereby drawing in more women and their perspectives.

     Ms Yeboah said this at a day’s gender sensitization forum to commission a research finding by the Ghana Media Standards Improvement Project (GMSIP),on “Media monitoring study on the coverage of men and women in Ghanaian Newspapers in 2010” in Ho on Monday.

     The forum was organized by GMSIP in collaboration with the Ghana Journalists Association and the Media Foundation for West Africa, with sponsorship from the Royal Danish Embassy.

     She said the media should seek out and report on more women to integrate them into national discourses.

     Ms Yeboah said newspaper content was mostly generated from routine sources (scheduled events) and hardly from enterprise sources (investigative).

     The findings revealed that women in Ghana attracted 15 percent media coverage in 2010, compared with 85 percent for men during the same period.

     She said “naturally, due to women’s under-representation, they lag behind in all the news topics coded”.

     Majority of the women covered in the media in 2010 were either politicians or government officials, with labourers and unemployed attracting no coverage, the research stated.

     She said out of the six newspapers studied, the state media appeared to be the worst culprits, with as many as seven male stories to one for females

     “Attention should therefore be given to equipping reporters with the needed skills to generate their own stories,” Ms Yeboah added.

     She urged reporters to consciously draw out the gendered perspectives of the issues they cover as this would require that they include women’s perspectives.

     “Journalists (male and female) should be trained and sensitized on issues of gender relations between men and women to enable them appreciate problem areas and report on them appropriately”.

     Ms Yeboah said female reporters tended to report on more females than male reporters and suggested that media owners and editors increase their female intake into the newsrooms as this might provide avenues for more female newsmakers.

     She urged the media to draw out gender perspectives of issues they cover and report more on women to integrate them into national discourses

     Ms Ajoa Yeboah-Afari, GMSIP Coordinator, said the forum was to create gender awareness in the media.

     She said there was still media coverage that tended to propagate ‘colo’ ideas about gender roles.

  Ms Yeboah-Afari said a gender sensitization media could help change the society in order to improve on gender issues