Comment: Will the NDC use the NPP media for election 2012 campaign?
Pro-NDC newspapers like The Catalyst, Daily Post, Daily Democrat, Crystal Clear Lens, Ghanaian Lens, The Republic and others which have been in the trenches with the NDC throughout its stay in opposition are being treated with utmost contempt by most of the officials of the NDC government who continue to, in a strange relationship, flirt with pro-NPP newspapers.
Unlike the NPP, the NDC government has reneged on its responsibility to build its pro-media for the ‘Better Ghana’ agenda. These papers are a formidable force today but the NDC cannot call them its own. The pro-NDC newspapers have been regarded as ‘fire officers’ who the current NDC leadership thinks they can fall on in critical moments to fight off the NPP after which they are almost totally forgotten. But we on this paper can state categorically that that is no longer going to happen.
Most of the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) still choose to place advertisements in the pro-NPP media as was the case under the Kufuor-led NPP government. This continues to strengthen the NPP media financially, leaving the NDC papers weaker in financial strength. The pro-NDC media has been crying for advertisement from state institutions since the inception of the NDC government with most of them deliberately looking the other way.
It was a policy under the Kufuor-led NPP government for the pro-NDC media to be starved of adverts. Strangely enough, the status quo has remained almost the same under the NDC government.
A prominent member of the NDC government whilst in London recently, disparagingly said that the NDC government has had to deal with the Daily Guides of this world because the ‘NDC press does not reach far.’
We do not want to recall the status of Daily Guide prior to 2001, then known as The Guide, a weekly and yet irregular 8-page black & white newspaper. It became Daily Guide and consciously built into the flagship newspaper that it is today for the NPP because the NPP government at the time decided to built strong media channels to ventilate its news.
Firstly, we on this paper wish to say that we sympathise with his ignorance. Secondly, we want to pray for his political soul. God forgive him for he knows not what he is saying.
We on this paper also want to make it clear to people like this prominent figure in the NDC government that we survived the treachery of Kufuor and his NPP and are sure we can survive anything people like him can do to us under the Mills-led NDC government. We were able to hold our own without adverts and also did not get a penny from any member of the NDC by way of sponsorship. Our cherished readers have kept us on the newsstands till date and there is very little people like him can do about it.
Well, with the election of a flagbearer by the NPP, the 2012 elections campaign has began in earnest and to as on The Catalyst, we are waiting patiently to see if people like this prominent figure of the NDC government will rely on newspapers like Daily Guide and the rest of the coffee shop mafia papers to help the NDC in the next general elections.