GJA receives revised guidelines on elections(centre spread) August 1, 2008

Story: Michael Donkor
THE Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) Group of Eminent Persons has presented the draft of the revised guidelines on election coverage to the executive of the association in Accra.
The President of the GJA, Mr Ransford Tetteh, who received the document, said the revision of the guidelines on election coverage had been carried out as part of efforts by the association to improve the quality of media coverage of elections in the country.
He said the GJA had found the guidelines a useful document which served as an essential reminder of how to cover elections, especially for those journalists and media houses who might be covering major elections for the first time.
Mr Tetteh said a workshop would be organised later, at which the document would be discussed before adoption.
He said it would then be published and circulated nation-wide and be the main resource material at workshops on election coverage.
The GJA President noted that elections were prime and vital instruments for the establishment of democracy because they sorted out the question of who should be entrusted with the lead management of the affairs of the state.
He said elections also constituted the source of legitimacy for political leadership in democratic dispensations and provided the citizenry with the fundamental form of political participation.
He said the GJA considered the revision of the guidelines in line with its commitment, among other aims and objectives, to promote high professional standards, integrity and media accountability.
Mr Tetteh stated that the association also regarded the document to be in consonance with the duty of members of the mass media to promote good governance and social cohesion through the effective coverage of elections.
He said the draft bill would be circulated among journalists, media houses and other stakeholder organisations nation-wide.
The Editor of the Ghanaian Times and immediate past President of the GJA, Ms Ajoa Yeboah-Afari, said the association decided to push for revisions to the guidelines because the media landscape had changed drastically since it was first introduced in 1996.
“There are so many media houses and so many people practising journalism who don’t have the experience,” she said.
Some key changes to the guidelines include increased emphasis on balanced campaign coverage.
Ms Yeboah-Afari said the guidelines urged media houses to offer equal coverage to all political campaigns.
She asked media houses to refrain from announcing the winner of an election if not all districts had counted their ballots.
“If somebody maligns another person, you make sure to give the maligned person the chance to react,” she added.
The revision was made possible by a GH¢15,000 donation from the French Embassy in Ghana.