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Promote positive image of Ghana

By
Hafsa Obeng/Eunice Hilda Ampomah, GNA

Accra, Oct. 17, GNA
– Dr Ziblim Iddi, the Deputy Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, has urged
media practitioners to promote a positive image of the country to the world.

He said the media,
which played a pivotal role in national development as the fourth estate of the
realm, is a reliable source of information and education to the public with a
responsibility of projecting the nation in a positive manner.

“It will take our
media to appreciate our own cultural values to project it in a manner that
would be attractive to the citizenry,” he added.

Dr Iddi gave the
advice at a “Media Sensitisation and Training Workshop” organised by the Ghana
Culture Forum on the theme: “Projecting our National Culture: The Challenges
and Opportunities for the Media Practitioner” on Thursday in Accra.

Professor Kwame
Karikari, Dean of School of Communication Studies, Wisconsin International
University College, said Ghanaians were gradually moving away from who they
truly were, and subsequently losing their identity. 

“How a country
portrays its culture defines the perception other countries have about it”, he
said, and admonished media practitioners to package Ghana admirably across the
globe.

He explained that by
publishing and broadcasting cultural messages, the media would help to promote
common standards of appreciation of culture to take away its prejudices.

Prof Karikari
identified media illiteracy in the local languages as a hindrance in promoting
culture, as most media contents were produced in English language.

“Newspaper as a way
of enhancing languages has not been effective at all,” he said.

The workshop, he
explained, was therefore important to encourage the media to portray and
represent the nation with its true identity.

Prof. Karikari said
the Ghanaian educational system destroyed local languages, especially as it
paid little focus on culture and resorted to teaching with foreign languages.

He called on
journalism training institutions to develop the skills of students in writing
and promoting culture and arts, saying the current effort in that regard was
inadequate.

He mentioned travel,
foods, arts, music, festivals, performing arts, cinema, books and literature,
beauty culture, marriage, and religion as disciplines of culture that could be
promoted by the media.

Nana Kobina Nketsia,
Omanhene of Essikado Traditional Area, described culture as ‘psychology’, which
enabled leaders to steer the affairs of society based on their thoughts and
beliefs.

By this, he said,
the media had a responsibility to shape the thoughts of the public about the
beauty of culture and the need to employ it in their daily lives.

“Culture is you and
the structure of your thoughts. You have to be an African first, before you can
use your media as a tool to promote it,” he said.

The Ghana Culture
Forum is a membership based civil society consultative forum, made up of
cultural practitioners, activists, and organisations united around a common
vision of affirming the cultural foundations of development and enhancing the
cultural sector.

GNA

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