In 2013, when a foreign ministry official asked journalists to step back from the lineup of the visiting Ghanaian delegation that awaited the handshake of the then-Turkish Prime Minister (now the President), Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it took me by surprise. It was painful as I concluded straightaway that the official did not respect journalists.
The latter had only joined the group not only because they were part of the delegation but also wanted to be part of the history unfolding. That opportunity was denied to journalists, and I was part of them. The occasion was a presidential state visit to Turkiye.
In 2014, however, nobody could deny me. This time it was the delegation’s meeting with the Asantehene (King of Asante) of Ghana, in Johannesburg, South Africa, after attending the Pretoria swearing-in of President Jacob Zuma for his second term.
I maintained a presence among top politicians who had circled an auditorium to exchange handshakes with the Asantehene.
None of the assistants who would easily pounce on journalists as not belonging to some fraternities was there so I had no butterflies in my stomach and boldly joined the personalities. Interestingly, it was at the point when the Asantehene was stretching his precious hand to offer me a handshake that he paused. Let me place emphasis here, that he stopped for a conversation only at the place where I stood.
The King turned to the President and said, Ato is my son and I have been looking for him. I won’t elaborate any further.
I will take the searchlight to the final communique presidential press conferences in places like Equatorial Guinea, Benin, South Africa, Namibia, and China where journalists including myself were called upon to ask vital questions in the pre-departure phases of high-level visits.
During the 2013 launch of the UN Millennium Development Goals, MDGs, 2013, at the Ford Convention Centre in New York, I was the only African journalist together with my cameraman who was allowed into the presidential auditorium, where a debate was moderated by CNN’s Richard Quest. Mr. Quest was rightfully accorded the respect he deserved for he is a good material, and generally some respect the media because of their sheer knowledge, experience, and popularity.
Maybe, the officer who stopped us from meeting up with Erdogan in Ankara was not present, or perhaps it was by luck, but the door was not shut on us (I think I was the only journalist present at the time) to have dinner with the former Saudi Crown Prince on a special location in tents on the outskirts of Riyadh. When it was necessary to cut down on the numbers that could meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican, some essential partakers were dropped but the journalists were allowed inside.
What mattered to the senior officials was those who could etch the momentous occasion on the pages of history, and here the journalists were indispensable for they represented an important backup to the traditional means of record-keeping.
Many delegation members were curious when a light conversation with Jack Webb, during a visit to Houston, United States, became so pensive. Jack Webb at the time was the Consul-General in Houston and being conversant with officialdom, he probably was fascinated with my answers to his questions, with regard to what Ghana really needs.
Well, to let that cat out of the bag, I was comparing roads in the two countries and I thought that America should be involved in the construction of first-class roads in my country, given the magnificence of Houston. And when in that same year, Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif sat by me in one of the enclosures within the UN General Assembly, I knew the preventive forces had lost their battle.
The fact is, a journalist might not have attended some of the first-class schools around the world but dangles in the virtual society where the opportunity is there to imbibe knowledge. A journalist who takes his job seriously must know that years of transcribing foreign news places him or her on the path to a certain expertise. Journalists, particularly news editors who provide quality controls before publications, are some of the professionals most abreast of happenings, and together with video editors, they form a team from where VVIPs may draw the best communication advisors.
It is a work in progress, the important duty of journalists is to use their discretions in the clean-up of several personalities before stories are published, in the name of social values. Even when inexperienced journalists fail the aptitude test, there are always seasoned ones to make the necessary corrections, in advance of communication about everybody and everything. Yet, the personalities who are properly sponged by journos before circumstances about them see the light of day would always fall for those standing in their physical presence and perhaps, doing what has come to be known as ”eye service.”
They are bus-stoppers and gatekeepers of the news, fine-tuned enough to assist personalities with both verbal and body language communication, part of their mettle being the critical role of ensuring that information is edifying and in compliance with tenets. Cameramen and women by the tilt of their gadgets can make teenagers look like octogenarians, and/or dwarf tall persons. The opposite is true.
One sage is quoted as saying that the process of childbearing which is when a woman goes into labor is the most difficult thing any human might endure from any of nature’s formulations. He said, what comes closest to this is writing a book. Journalists are members of the writing club. Another sage said, one may consider the journalist to be anything but one thing is clear.
”The journalist knows that the world is spherical”. Any journalist who is worthy of the profession will not underperform when vetted for an appointment. They are erudite. They are enlightened. They know people and places.
I wonder which audience will give any journalist in Ghana the kind of standing ovation that Richard Quest drew from the UN Heads of State gathering. In our part of the world, someone might be stopping you from even getting the faintest eye contact. What they do not know is that some of the personalities parading in different titles were classmates or schoolmates of journalists. Academic dons, parliamentarians, ministers of state, judges, etc you name them. I am looking to the day schools would advertise for vacant positions in the English language, and to observe how journalists selected for such roles are able to radically improve and transform students in the subject.
