Journalism beyond Kofi Adoma’s eyes

If I had not become a journalist, I would have volunteered to be an unknown reptile somewhere in the tropics. Like Mercedes Benz, there is journalism and other professions. Fortunately, ours is not a profession; it is a calling pursued by iconoclasts who live ahead of their careers. When the itch to tell a story settles on you, a near orgasmic whirl consumes your fingers as you compose a compelling lead. At the same time, different shades of ideas jostle for space in your head. You are minded to report everything except your opinion. You must tell the story quickly, but accurately. When you slap your byline atop the finished work, you reassure yourself that your newspaper or TV station just earned another client.

Dormaahene’s native son
This was Kofi Adoma’s daily routine until December last year when he was allegedly shot in the eye in the line of duty. At the invitation of the Dormaa Traditional Council, Angel TV, Kofi’s employers, dispatched the popular journalist to Dormaa Ahenkro, to cover the Kwafie Festival and the 25th Anniversary of the installation of Osagyefo Oseadeayo Nana Agyemang Badu II, Dormaahene. As an indigene of Bono, Kofi had found the assignment a natural obligation and a professional duty to also use his private Kofi TV platform to extend the coverage beyond Angel TV, to whom payment had been made. Who can tell the Dormaa story better than Kofi? He is a native son – son of the land, and owes allegiance to Dormaahene.

It was reported that during the traditional musketry displays, a bodyguard of the Chief fired a musket at close range in the face of Kofi Adoma, causing gunpowder and debris to enter the journalist’s eyes. It was further reported that he sustained significant injuries in both eyes and was transported to a local hospital for immediate care. With help from sympathizers including business mogul Ibrahim Mahama, brother of Ghana’s president, he was flown to Dubai for advanced care. Kofi’s risks going blind completely as a result of the impact of the gunpowder. With one eye buried under heavy plasters, Kofi Adoma Nwanwanii (extraordinary/strange) is coming to the painful realization that there are more extraordinary aspects of journalism. He worries Dormaahene has not called him.

Kofi feels betrayed that in his most desperate hour of need, he has not received love and support from his people in Dormaa Ahenkro. At his recent press conference, he asked: “So if I had died, would this be how I would have been easily forgotten and all my hard work, quickly overlooked?” These are the real tissues of Kofi Adoma’s issues. They are also the issues of every journalist in Ghana today? Meanwhile, Kofi has more surgeries to do to restore his lost eye. A gofundme account has been created (gofundme.com/f/KofiAdomah) and some 11,000 Euros has been raised. Please, let’s support our colleague and brother.
Professional standards
The thing with journalism is that once you touch it, you can either fail upwards or succeed downwards. According to one of journalism’s most respected brains, Andrew Marr of the BBC, you fail upwards as a journalist when you are lured by big money to abandon the inky trade and venture into public relations. You have succeeded downwards when you just can’t get the inverted pyramid right, or you buff up a quote or steal another person’s work. In our line of business, you are a thief if you reproduce portions of your own work in a new reporting context without making the necessary acknowledgements. It is called self-plagiarism. This is how Johan Lehrer lost his job at The New Yorker in 2012. He stole from himself.

You would think the people who are subjected to this level of professional fastidiousness are handsomely rewarded for their craft. Maybe we should have called it Jourpro-bono. While a 17 year old school dropout is necessarily paid a monthly wage for serving customers as a store girl, there are journalists in Ghana who have never received a pesewa after reporting the news for years. Like their colleagues from established news organisations who are lucky to receive monthly salaries, they run after politicians for interviews, do their research and practice their lines before the cameraman shouts ‘Action’. You get a first warning when you mispronounce or misspell your opening lines. The second warning is a sack by a verbal or text message from a job for which there was no salary.

Footprints of excellence
The sales girl is better in another sense: she is able to take or steal a sachet of sugar home, depending on her mood, and may be asked by a sex-consumed customer to keep the change. Who buys from the journalist? He is often deemed to be selling items his customers think they can get for free. In my days, we sometimes received ‘soli’ for showing up at the press conference. Today, organizations have strict rules against ‘soli’ but they surreptitiously or sometimes openly pay their favourites to set their agenda or bring down a political enemy.

News presenters look good on TV in beautiful dresses and shoes, but they are only breathing manikins favoured by boutique owners to display their new collections, to attract new customers. They are expected to return the items after the show, with the labels and price tags firmly stuck to their right places. They call it packaging.

These were Kofi Adoma’s beginnings. Like many, Kofi’s love affair with journalism was serendipitous. His talent for journalism was spotted when he was in ‘his elements’ as a school teacher in Berekum. Experimenting with his first news job at Shalom FM in Berekum, he seamlessly melted into the pool of the finest talents of the trade, quickly leaving footprints of excellence at Volta Star Radio, Fox FM, Hot FM, Adom FM/TV and presently lead news anchor at Angel FM/TV. Journalism, Ahoy!

Kwesi Tawiah-Benjamin
Tissues Of The Issues
bigfrontiers@gmail.com

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