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The Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, has appealed to journalists in the region to give prominence to rural reporting. He said writing more about the lives of the people in the rural areas would enable journalists to help identify some of the socio-cultural practices which are inimical to the development of the country. Mr Ofosu-Ampofo was speaking at the end of year get-together of the Eastern Regional Branch of the Ghana journalists Association at Koforidua at the weekend. He appealed to journalists to be innovative and assured them of the readiness of the Regional Co-ordinating Council to support journalists in the region to organize programmes to improve upon their professional competence. Mr Ofosu-Ampofo thanked the media in the region for their support and expressed the hope that the cordial relationship between the RCC and the media in the region would deepen. The President of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), Mr Ransford Tetteh, said the media and government could collaborate for national development without the media compromising its role. He appealed to journalists to desist from demeaning national leaders when they are criticizing them and said Ghana was part of the international community and if the media in the country degraded the leaders of the country their peers from other countries would not respect them or the country. Mr Tetteh urged journalists to uphold the ethics of the profession and be accountable for their actions as they hold others to be accountable to society. The Regional Chairman of the GJA, Mr Edmund Quaynor, said the association had initiated moves for the re-introduction of the meet the press series in the region and urged the business community in the region to take advantage of the programme and not to leave it for the politicians alone. He said the association would organize training programmes to help raise the performance of both members and non-members of the association during the year. Mr Emmanuel Sarfo, a veteran journalist who chaired the function, called on media practitioners to be effective agents of change.