Who said journalism is fun? (Part 2)

Yes, journalism can be fun. But sometimes it amounts to sheer drudgery. And frustration, frustration, frustration!

Imagine having taken the trouble to write a whole article; reading through it and making corrections as necessary. Only to find out that those responsible for sending it to the recipient have not been able to do so, often through no fault of their own!

Before the arrival of the internet in Ghana, the only way one could send an article overseas was to cable it, or if it was somewhat long, to telex it. In either case, one would have to drive to the External Communications office on High Street, Accra, to deposit the copy and leave it for the staff to transmit it to its destination.

But in the 1970s and 1980s (especially) our external communications system was rubbish. One would sometimes leave a cable or telex message there and come back two or three days later, possibly clutching a new message, to find that the old one was still lying there UNSENT! The reason? “The lines are cycling, Sir!”, one would be told. No lines, no transmission. No transmission of the story, no possibility of its being used. Story not used, no pay!

It was soul-destroying to work hard on a story, drive with it to the Cable Office in the heat and – through heavy traffic – to deposit it, only to find out on one’s next visit, that it had not been sent but was still lying around. BECAUSE THE LINES WERE “STILL CYCLING!”

But what could one do? One needed to be optimistic. Or else, one would starve to death. For in Ghana, journalists who have obtained paid employment don’t seem to think that freelancers should live on anything but air. Yet freelancers could contribute a lot of good stories to their media if the freelancers were adequately encouraged. That attitude has, unfortunately, persisted with the major press organisations; nor have the electronic media done anything about it, though some of them seem to be thriving economically.

And since it is the same guys with such an undesirable attitude towards the fate of their freelance colleagues who largely man the Ghana Journalists Association, one can sadly expect the situation to endure. Who will fight for the freelancers?

The biggest trouble is that the proprietors, who hold the purse strings, often know, or care little, about journalism as such, and run their organisations for purposes other than serving or informing the public. Usually, politics comes top of their concerns.

In addition to technical difficulties making it difficult for one to send one’s copy early enough for it to be still topical when it is received by one’s clients, one had to compete for space in the media one wrote for. London, in particular, was teeming with experts on every subject from any part of the world. I once received a query on a story I had written for the Financial Times, in which I made what I thought was only a passing reference to timber production in Ghana.

Back came a polite but very informative query from the FT, which could only have been written to the paper by someone who had been trading in Ghana timber for donkeys’ years.

On another occasion, a “reader” tested me by asking trick questions on cocoa, including the “difference” between Mr. William Ofori Atta (then Cocobod chair) and Nana Ofori

Atta The Second!

Queries like these were sent via the foreign desk, so imagine what would have happened to my credibility had I not had the answers at my fingertips! On a third occasion, The Sunday Times cabled to ask me to substantiate a line in a story of mine, accusing the Ghana Government of allowing Rothmans Cigarettes to operate in Ghana even though the UN had imposed sanctions on South African companies. It said the Ghanaian owner of Rothmans (Ghana) was threatening to sue the paper! Of course, I had done my research and promptly sent the paper to the South African addresses of the company’s non-Ghanaian directors.

I also had a tussle with Ashanti Goldfields Corporation, when I published an article in the London New Statesman pointing out that Obuasi town had been grossly neglected by the company, despite it being so profitable that it had been described as “the richest gold mine in the world”. I asked why the Ghana Government wanted to sell it to Lonrho when Lonrho had been accused, by Mr Edward Heath, Prime Minister in a Conservative Government in the UK, of being “the ugly face of capitalism”.

Again, I had to show “evidence” to support my assertion; this time, to the Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Information in Accra, whose Ministry (I suspected) had not furnished the Government with all the information available about Lonrho!

Such encounters made me very wary when writing anything that could not be easily ascertained in Ghana. Thus, when I had my titanic confrontation in 1970 with Prime Minister Kofi Busia on his proposal to engage in “dialogue” with the apartheid government of South Africa, I was fully prepared to provide evidence to support my belief that Prime Minister Vorster of South Africa wanted to use Ghana, in the company of such countries as Malawi and the Ivory Coast, to prove to South Africa’s black populace that they could no longer rely on the rest of Black Africa for support and that waging an armed struggle against white rule was futile.

As readers who have long memories will recall, I got fired as editor of the Daily Graphic for opposing the dialogue effort by Dr. Busia. It wasn't 'fun’, of course, but just imagine how I felt when I was invited to Pretoria to see with my own eyes, Nelson Mandela being sworn in as the first democratically-elected President of South Africa, on that auspicious day, 10th May 1994!