<\/p>\n
When I joined the news section of the Ghana Broadcasting System in 1957, the standards in the newsroom were extremely high.<\/p>\n
Our Head of News was a guy called Ian Wilson, who had been a BBC newsman for over 20 years before being seconded to the Gold Coast Broadcasting System. Beneath him was a chap who has graduated in journalism in America. These guys had a good idea what \u201cnews\u201d was, and they made sure that we never made mistakes of fact and\/or grammar in the stories we broadcast to the whole country.<\/p>\n
But the main pillar of strength in the newsroom was a lanky, bearded chap called Shang Simpson. He\u2019d been trained at the\u00a0Daily<\/em>\u00a0Graphic<\/em>\u00a0and was conversant with proof-reading and other techniques that the paper had imported from its owners, the\u00a0Daily<\/em>\u00a0Mirror<\/em>\u00a0Group of London. It was sacrilege for a typographical error to appear in the paper and so, apart from specialised proof-readers who read the copy straight from the type-setters, senior editorial staff like the Chief Sub-Editor all took a final look at the stories before they were printed. This, in spite of the fact that there was a dedicated \u2018Stone Editor\u2019 who was always at the \u2018Stone\u2019 (printing room), whose job was to make sure that editorial \u2018matter\u2019 was correctly printed.<\/p>\n Because of this background, Shang Simpson drilled it into us never to allow a story to reach the news readers with a single mistake in it. Of course, typists made mistakes, in spite of their much-vaunted qualifications from commercial colleges. The difference between typists and typists was sometimes unbelievable. We had a guy called Adiba whom everyone wanted to use.<\/p>\n But the best of all, a chap called \u2018KK\u2019, \u201cwas reserved\u201d for the Head of News as his \u201cPrivate Secretary\u201d. We all resented this, because all he really did for the Head of News was to type beautiful notes to those who invited that guy for lunch, dinner or cocktail parties. Occasionally, when we were \u201chot\u201d in the newsroom, because news of importance had broken out late, KK came to the rescue and could type stories straight from dictation without missing a thing.<\/p>\n Sometimes, when I read articles from the newspapers [sadly including some of those from whom I write!], I cannot believe that they have allowed certain typos to go into print uncorrected. Simple typos, like a mixture of letters and figures in a word; or simple grammatical errors that creep into one\u2019s writing when tight deadlines demand extraordinary speed, appear not to have been checked before going to the printers. It is true that there isn\u2019t that much money to throw around newsrooms these days, but surely, expert proof-reading must be one of the sine-qua-nons<\/em>\u00a0of every journalistic operation?<\/p>\n How I miss the guys who used to wield \u201cindelible pencils\u201d at the printer\u2019s, poring over one\u2019s copy word by word and line by line, miraculously detecting mistakes one had missed, despite all one\u2019s efforts to be one\u2019s own proof-reader! So relatively easy have things become for the modern word-processed production system that it appears good proof-readers have been jettisoned into the unemployment killing fields! I plead that they should be brought back.<\/p>\n One of the funniest things about journalism in those days was that one\u2019s personal life was closely scrutinised to ensure that one did not, for instance, get into debt, as that could expose one to blackmail or undue influences. I remember the shock I got one day when on arriving at the office at GBC, I was handed a \u201cWrit of Summons\u201d that had been served on me through the GBC Administrative Department.<\/p>\n My landlord, who was resentful that his wife did not hand to him an agreed sum of money that she charged me for \u201chouse-keeping\u201d, had issued the writ against me, despite the fact that we had agreed I would leave the house at the end of the month! Apart from \u201cunpaid rent\u201d, he demanded a \u201crefund of boarding expenses!\u201d<\/p>\n He knew I would have to settle his demands rather than have the writ of summons remain on my \u2018Personal File!\u2019<\/p>\n And indeed, so shocked was I by the man\u2019s unscrupulous attitude \u2013 especially the blatant untruths in the writ \u2013 that I allowed a friendly editor of mine, Mr Robert Tabi, to go and pay the man as much as I could find, and moved from the house immediately.<\/p>\n At Broadcasting House, even one\u2019s private life was scrutinised to ensure that one did not conduct \u201cunapproved\u201d relations with the opposite sex. One news reader was sacked unceremoniously when his name appeared in the newspapers as the \u201cco-respondent\u201d in a divorce case that went to court. Why should a person\u2019s romantic life be relevant to his work?<\/p>\n But you see that I still remember that awful story? Those methods were used to keep us in line! If one had a propensity to engage in adultery, one would remember that it could have a negative effect on one\u2019s journalistic career.<\/p>\n Yes \u2013 managements of journalistic enterprises do owe society a duty to ensure that their employees behave correctly as much as possible. But, of course, managements must also employ staff in numbers and of a quality that can ensure that typos and mistakes of fact are avoided like the plague in their establishments.<\/p>\n By Cameron Duodu<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I joined the news section of the Ghana Broadcasting System in 1957, the standards in the newsroom were extremely high. Our Head of News was a guy called Ian Wilson, who had been a BBC newsman for over 20 years before being seconded to the Gold Coast Broadcasting System. Beneath him was a chap […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":191335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-977492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=977492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=977492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=977492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=977492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}