ABSTRACT

Although radio has historically been the most widespread media in Ghana and much of Africa, little is known about its news-making practices in political news. Given the rise of mediated politics in an emerging democracy like Ghana, radio's role in enabling communication between political actors and citizens has grown even more pertinent. Drawing on news media logic, described as the imperatives which guide news production, this paper investigates political news production practices through analysis of 17 semi-structured interviews of Ghanaian journalists, politicians and civil society experts. It reveals an emerging trend in political journalism where Ghanaian private radio stations are fast adopting news media logic, characterised by a commercialisation and lack of professionalism, both identified as detrimental to democracy. These practices raise concerns about the media's power in excluding certain political views which do not conform to its logic, thereby providing audiences with a limited reality of the political space. If the sustenance of democracy partly lies on the media providing citizens with accurate information that reflects the range of actors in politics, then attention needs to be paid to these production practices which present limited political content to citizens.

摘要

尽管从历史上看广播一直是加纳和非洲大部分地区使用最广泛的媒体，但对于政治新闻中的新闻制作方法知之甚少。鉴于加纳这样的新兴民主国家中媒介政治的兴起，电台在促进政治人物与公民之间的交流中的作用越来越重要。本文利用被描述为指导新闻生产的当务之急的新闻媒体逻辑，通过对加纳记者，政客和民间社会专家的17种半结构化访谈进行分析，从而研究政治新闻生产实践。它揭示了政治新闻业的一种新兴趋势，加纳的私人广播电台正在迅速采用新闻媒体逻辑，其特征是商业化和缺乏专业精神，这两种特征均被视为不利于民主。这些做法引起了人们对媒体排除某些不符合其逻辑的政治观点的力量的关注，从而为受众提供了有限的政治现实空间。如果民主的维持部分取决于向公民提供能够反映政治活动主体范围的准确信息的媒体，那么就需要注意这些生产实践，这些生产实践对公民提出了有限的政治内容。