Public Agenda (Accra)
Richard Ellimah
16 May 2008
opinion
The caller tells Joy FM's Super Morning Show host, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah that she is caught up in the middle of an early morning rainstorm and there is a danger of her car submerging in the ferocious floods.
In fact, the panic in her voice is so palpable. Another caller, Bernard, sends an SOS to the programme host and says if help does not come in a few minutes he will be swept away by the floods. In response, Kojo calls National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) and Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) officials and directs them to the areas where the distressed calls came from. It is amazing the level of people's expectations of radio.
Radio is the new craze in developing countries. It is uncommon to see young and old, men and women, rich and poor, urban and rural dweller clutching at rectangular electronic devices that blare out both music and talk shows. For some of these people, radio is their companion day and night and is the closest device to contemporary technology that they possess. Welcome to the radio revolution!
Radio is simple, cheap and accessible. This makes it a real friend to many in the developing world where pervasive poverty means people cannot afford the luxury of a television set let alone access the internet. In Ghana, with as little as 2 cedis, a person can get a radio set. Families therefore purchase one set and the entire household benefits. Wherever you are, be it the kitchen, farm, bathroom, toilet, classroom, walking by the roadside or relaxing under a tree, radio can intrude and keep you company. The added benefit of radio is the multiplicity of stations one radio receiver can churn out.
It is not that there has never been a mode of sending messages in the past. Long before the advent of European colonialists, traditional societies had their own means of sending messages. In times past, the town crier was the chief messenger. It was his duty to transmit messages to the people from the chief and his elders. His mode of presenting the message galvanized people to actively participate in local governance. In traditional Akan societies, the tone of the drum beat connotes the message being sent. For instance, when the chief or a prominent person passes away, the sound of the drumbeat is different from that of a festival announcement. This way, the community was adequately informed of events both within the community and outside.
This medium of communication that promoted active participation in community governance has virtually faded out. One reason is that through increased urbanization, more and more people have moved out of the close village environment into more diversified and complex environments where community mobilization by means of a town crier is extremely difficult, if not impossible. Such communities will therefore have no need of a village crier. Furthermore, increased use of modern technology has presented other opportunities for announcing events to community people and certainly, the "tontonsansan" or talking drum is not one of them because it has outlived its usefulness.
With these disadvantages, radio presents the easiest and simplest methods of enhancing community mobilization for development. Its advantages transcend both rural and urban dwellers. In fact, the late media icon Professor P. A. V. Ansah describes radio as the only true "mass medium" because the transistor revolution has reached even "the rural dwellers".
In developing key governance indicators, the World Bank, notes that accountability of government officials, transparency in government procedures, openness in government transactions as well as reliable flow of information are all crucial to the survival of any democratic order.
Governance is therefore not only about structures or institutions. These institutions exist to further the process of governance. Ultimately however, empowering the people to actively participate in this process by feeding them with timely and reliable information is critical to the survival of the structures. It can therefore be deduced that there exist the "hard" and "soft" parts of governance. What most developing countries have done is to place a lot of emphasis on the hard part. These countries have succeeded in establishing flamboyant institutions with sweeping powers and incidentally, raised hopes that the mere existence of these institutions alone ever solved any governance questions. Why didn't Bernard call NADMO or the GNFS straight away? There are several possibilities one can look at. It is very probable that he did not even know the contact numbers of these public officials who are supposed to come to their aid in their moment of need. The other possibility is that even if he did know the contact numbers, the problem might be with how he would be received. To expand the argument further, how many Ghanaians know the telephone numbers of key governance institutions? At the district level, what is the nature of interaction between the assembly and the people within the district?
The advent of radio has contributed significantly to solving the questions of governance. How does radio contribute to governance? If indeed, the general consensus is that governance involves people, then how do people participate in governance? To begin with, there is no denying the fact that radio plays some role in enhancing participatory democracy. It provides a platform for the citizenry to share ideas, question existing policies of government, and generally hold public office holders accountable to the people. In an election year like this, radio stations are bringing politicians and the electorate together in a marriage whose fruits can only further our democracy.
Radio allows people to freely express themselves on issues they feel strongly about. Government policies are often times put under the microscope on radio stations for effective public discussions. As a result, most responsible governments in developing countries use radio to gauge the direction of public opinion on critical issues. This then informs public decision making.
The accessibility of radio makes it easily adaptable, particularly with respect to language usage. The widespread use of local languages on air is therefore a good innovation that has shattered the language barrier that the hitherto religious devotion to the English language presented. Now people can listen to the news in their own dialect and contribute to discussions on air. They even have the added advantage of getting portions of the English language newspapers interpreted for them in their own dialect, enabling them to share their ideas on governance.
Though playing a crucial role in governance, Ghana's over 200 radio stations have still yet to realise their fullest potential. Undue emphasis on sports, politics and sensationalism has characterised the programmes of these stations, and thereby alienated them from the crucial constituency they are constitutionally mandated to serve.
It is fashionable these days to get business tycoons purchase radio frequencies and start radio stations without having the slightest idea about the ramifications of this step they have taken. Lacking the required knowledge base and managerial expertise, they employ presenters who also do not have the professional acumen to handle programmes. The result is the chaos in the airwaves. Is it not amazing that after more than a decade of FM revolution in the country, there still are presenters who exhibit crass ignorance about some of the most pressing issues confronting the nation? Whiles infrastructure wise, management of radio stations have gone far, they have failed to build the capacity of their presenters. Professionalism is really a scare commodity in the radio industry.
It is probably time for the National Media Commission, National Communications Authority and National Frequency Board as regulators to sit up and check the abuses in the radio industry. The National Media Commission should move swiftly to abate the increasing use of obscenities on air. A trend is developing in the radio industry, particularly in Kumasi where stations that do daily reports of court proceedings place so much stress on rape and defilement cases. Though positive, it becomes worrying when in presenting these stories, the victims are rather ridiculed and maligned. This is unacceptable, more especially when the focus of the nation has been on encouraging victims of rape and defilement to openly tell of their experiences so that the perpetrators can be prosecuted. Radio must be used to give a voice to the weak and marginalised and not to mock them.
Radio has been used to accomplish several ends. The role of radio in the despicable Rwandan genocide is still very fresh in people's minds, even though it has been more than ten years since it happened. As Ghanaians brace themselves for December's all-important elections, radio stations ought to appreciate that the general public trusts them to promote peace and harmony, and more importantly, provide them with information to enable them make informed choices in the election of a President and 230 Parliamentarians. Can radio stations rise up to this challenge?
It remains to be seen.
Richard Ellimah is an MSc Development Planning and Management student of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi
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