CNN Ghana report ‘bad piece of journalism’ – MFWA

The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has taken a swipe at American news agency Cable News Network (CNN), describing their misleading reports in the aftermath of Ghana’s elections as a “bad piece of journalism”.

The international media organisation reported that Ghanaians queued to buy food and struggled to purchase basic services during and after the polls.

“The national economy will be Akufo-Addo’s major challenge. Oil reserves were discovered off the coast of Ghana in 2007, but Ghanaians struggle to obtain food and day-to-day services. Rolling blackouts are common and citizens often stand in long lines to obtain products,” a part of the article, titled: ‘Ghana election: Incumbent concedes to Nana Akufo-Addo’ said.

CNN was forced to amend the story after some Ghanaians launched a #CNNGetItRight campaign on social media.

Reacting to CNN’s report in an interview with Accra News on Monday December 12, Sulemana Braimah, Executive Director of MFWA, said the latest report by the Atlanta-based organisation fed into Western stereotypes about Africa, regarded by many in the developed world as a single country of great human suffering.

“So, often, they are looking for news that will be negative – that Africa is full of wars, violence, and disease. That is what they believe their audience will love to hear or see,” he stated.

He noted that CNN and their ilk deliberately fail to project the positive happenings on the continent to the outside world, as it will be “of no news” to their audience, given the negative stories they have fed them with over the years.

Mr Braimah urged local media organisations to expose such negative stories, leading to corrections or retractions by such foreign news bodies, as happened with the CNN story.