2012 vice-presidential candidate of the Progressive People�s Party (PPP,) Ms. Eva Lokko, has charged the National Media Commission (NMC) to �close down media houses� in the country which do not pay their staff.
According to her, the practice where media houses do not pay their staff breeds corruption.
Madam Lokko made these observations on This Day, one of the flagships programmes on Ghana�s premier internet-based radio station�www.hedjorleonlineradio.com, in Accra yesterday.
She said some media houses were creating avenues for their employees to become corrupt by taking money from people and putting out wrong information for public consumption.
Some journalists, she added, are qualified enough for the job to be misinforming the public on issues of national interest.
She therefore called on the Ghana Journalist Association (GJA) to weed out bad nuts whom she claimed were making the journalism profession unattractive.
��they think that as soon as you come from a company or you are a freelancer and you have a microphone and you have a pen, you have the authority to talk to people anyway you want, there are some of us who should not be in this field and the GJA must weed such people out,� Ms. Lokko charged.
The 2012 running-mate of the PPP attributed the low standard in the journalism to education.
�The education curricula needs to be changed and made more practical than it is now,� she suggested.
Her concern was that some teachers were not abreast of modern techniques of teaching.
Although she agreed that some schools were doing better than others, she called on the ministry of education and the Ghana Education Service (GES) to change the curriculum, describing it as �outmoded and not up to date.�
Ms. Lokko went on to advocate for the infusion of professional courses into the curricula.
She further argued that some of the information in the curriculum was archaic and not relevant to the current system, adding that the �wheels cannot be reinvented.
When asked about her political future, she said �it is not on a halt.�
To this end, she advised media practitioners in the country to go about their work with �diligence and truthfulness.�
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