China’s positive reporting trainings for ghanaian journalists: A boost to ‘balanced reportage’ in Ghana?

Abstract

While Ghana’s 1992 Constitution is said to have established watchdog journalism as an imperative feature of Ghana’s fourth republican dispensation, the independent media’s obsession with the ‘negative news sells’ mentality is equally argued to be helping sell Ghana short. Within this context, Ghana’s former president, John Agyekum Kufuor (JAK), has emerged as a strong advocate for balanced reportage – which represents the journalistic practice involving impartial and equal attention paid to both positive and negative news – in Ghana. Against the backdrop of China’s extensive professionalization media trainings on positive reporting for Ghanaian journalists, this study examines whether such Chinese exposures should be considered as a boost to JAK’s quest for balanced reportage in Ghana. Based on the opinions of 13 respondent journalists, this study shows that the overwhelming majority of them are not practicing China’s positive reporting norm in Ghana. In fact, the Chinese trainings had a reverse effect on two of the respondents, who returned home from their trainings in China even more determined to do watchdog journalism. But since the few that are practicing the Chinese norm are doing so alongside (not as a replacement of) their extant practice of watchdog journalism, this study argues that the Chinese trainings may be preponderantly considered as a boost to JAK’s quest for balanced reportage in Ghana. These findings make original contributions to the scholarly gap on the impact-nexus of Beijing’s media trainings and journalistic practices; the notions and intersections of positive reporting, watchdog journalism, and balanced reportage; and norm localization theory.