FAUSTER ATTA MENSAH AND THE GTV BLUNDER: MY TAKE I sympathise with my good friend, Abdul Hayi Moomen but I sincerely think heaping all the blame on in is unfair. A presenter is the face of the show and cannot escape criticism when something goes wrong. Having worked in the media for sometime now, I know some presenters sometimes conduct interviews on subjects they know very little or nothing about. Sometimes they do it so well that you would think they are experts. A presenter has producers. Where the system really works, the producers are responsible for research, etc. Fauster Atta Mensah, Im told, first appeared on the GTV Breakfast Show before he appeared on Moomen24tonight. So if Joy FMs Super Morning show interviews a guest, and later Nana Ansah Kwao on My Opinion, he is likely not to doubt the persons designation and would be less rigorous in his background checks. Its normal to feel that way. Also, Fauster Atta Mensah had been celebrated by the Ministry of Science and Environment and honoured by the Church of Pentecost. All the information was on the internet. He had photoshoped pictures of him at NASA as well as a fake video of an interview he had granted to Al Jazeera. He also produced a fake article written by the CNN about him. So if you are a presenter and your producer gives you this personality to interview, you are likely to fall for it if the internet corroborates this information. So in as much as Moomen cannot escape the blame, the extent to which critics are taking it, is unfair. He is one of the finest young journalists we have in the country and one blunder does not wipe out all his good works. What happened to Moomen can happen to anybody and this one should serve as a lesson to everyone, especially journalists. Two years ago, I was doing a story about language and I came across a man who claimed he was dismissed from the Presbyterian College of Education, Akropong, because he failed in Twi, a language he could not speak. I had a tutor at PRESEC Legon, who was his mate and he confirmed it. He was a very brilliant guy, the PRESEC tutor told me. It sounded credible I decided to go to the school. He had left the school close to 20 years, but the school managed to produce his file. He didnt just fail in Twi. He had failed three other subjects. Euclid Addo knows this story. In my work as investigative journalist, I have received complaints and documents indicting people but painstaking digging proved otherwise, even though some of the documents were authentic. It is difficult to trust sources, but no journalist can work without sources. Sometimes, the one giving the information has not any evil intention but the information is wrong. When I got the Zoomlion contract with GYEEDA, the amount paid to Zoomlion was the same as the one on the contract. But if I had gone public with that information, I would have been wrong. A single sheet of paper exchanged Ofosu Ampofo and Clement Kofi Humado had changed the payment terms, which Abuga Pele and no one at GYEEDA knew. And the fear of being misled is my greatest fear in journalism. The best way out is to dig deeper and, in most instances, the internet can fail you as it did to GTV Abdul Moomen and his production team. Remember it can happen to you because in Ghana, information is difficult to authenticate. Just be more careful, cynical and skeptical. It helps.
Posted on: Fri, 23 May 2014 12:22:59 +0000
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