Question

b. Discuss four (4) ways in which Mass Media Consolidation has influenced journalism in Ghana.

Answer 1

Now, first of all, what is mass media consolidation?

In other words, it can be put as concentration of media ownership whereby only a few individuals or organizations control the majority of the shares of the mass media. Fewer hands and giant corporations tend to own more and more of the media. One of the major conseqences of this is a poorly informed public, who are unfortunately restricted to a much reduced basket of media options which exclusively showcase that information which does not hamper the media olipoly's interests in any way. This is exactly what is happening in Ghana and has significantly impacted journalism there. Let us take a look how:

1) Inconsistency and non-transparency in ownership information: For a lot of media outlets, ownership data isnt available at the Registrar General's office where all organizations have an obligation to register. In certain cases, the media outlets were registered under a certain company priorly but presently operate under the umbrella of a giant media group on their own accord. This low level of transparency leads to disguising of market powers and the reality of mass media consolidation.

2) Strong ties of polticians to the media: At least one third of the influentia media outlets are either owned by the state or have affluent polticians as major shareholders. This influences the quality of information that is passed onto the public via media, especially regarding political affairs in the country.

3) Women are underrepresented in media houses: It is very clear that Ghanaian media ownership and management is highly dominated by the males. And the two female owners are the wives of major shareholders. So, this far from equal gender ratio is a similar picture in case of board members and top journalists.

4) Weak regulatory system: The conflicts of interest between politics and transparent journalism, leading to the win of the former illustrate overall weakness of the media's regulatory system. There is no safeguard to curb political control over media house ownership.

5) Ethnography of media: Also, sociocultural factors are believed to affect the mass media production in Ghana. The cultural, poitical and economic factors in mass media ownership shape the slow development of English-language media in stark contrast to the widely established African language print and broadcast media in Ghana.