Most of the questions journalists asked during Wednesday’s presidential encounter have been deemed to be relevant even though the quality is suspect.

A research conducted by Kweku Botwe a lecturer with the National Film and Television Institute and the Dr Etse Sikanku also a lecturer and host of World Affairs programme rated highly the question asked by Abdul Haye Moomen with state broadcaster GTV.

Moomen demanded to know from the president how safe the country was in the wake of the recent arrest of men with grenades.

The following is full details of the research;

This score/ranking is part of the results of a media content analysis study done on the questions journalists posed to president Akufo-Addo during his second encounter with the media, a year into his administration. The researchers believe that the type of questions asked by journalists is as important as, if not a trigger to, the kind of responses from the president.

The research is a continuous work by researchers who started this assessment of journalists’ questions in 2016 during ex-president Mahama’s tenure. That makes this particular one the third in the series of research work in this area. It is aimed at systematically assessing the type of questions posed by journalists in Ghana.

The result is as follows.

No.	Journalist	Media House	Rank
1	Abdul Haye Moomen	GTV	1st
2	Bernard Avle	Citi FM	2nd
3	Ekow Moses	Bloomberg	2nd
4	Kemini Amanor	EIB (GHOne)	4th
5	Kwesi Pratt	Insight	5th
6	Nana Esi Boateng	Oman FM	5th
7	King Edward	Hello FM (Ksi)	7th
8	Kojo Yankson	Multimedia (Joy fm)	7th
9	Ebow Quansah		9th
10	Saadia	Pan African TV	9th
11	Victor Kwawukume	Daily Graphic	9th
12	Charles Takyi-Boadu	Daily Guide	12th
13	Adu Gyamfi Marfo	Osagyefo FM (Mankesim)	13th
14	Countryman Songo	Multimedia (Adom)	14th
15	Prince Obeng	Ark FM (Sunyani)	15th
16	Annie Ampofo	Group Ndoum Media	16th
17	Asare Bediako	New Crusading Guide	17th
18	Naana Ntiri	Peace FM	17th

*Eyram Bashan and Camrom Duodu were not scored. The researchers felt that even though they raised very relevant issues they were more in the form of suggestions than questions. 

The journalists were scored based on four criteria – relevance of the question, specificity of the question, and quality/standard of the question.

 

Definition and score (weight) of the various criteria

Criterion	Relevance	Specificity	Quality/Standard	Total Score
Definition	National/Public Interest National Debate Impact	Single Issue Simple & Short sentences Focus of Issue	Good background
Score	10	8	2	20

 

Contact: Kwaku Botwe (krufibotwe@gmail.com)