afrol News, 24 August - The Metropolitan Archbishop of Accra, Rev. Charles G. Palmer-Buckle, has exhorted Ghanaian journalists to "form, in-form and trans-form the individual and society."

The Archbishop, a former editor of ‘Catholic Standard‘, made the comments while presenting a paper on the topic “Ghana at 50: safeguarding democracy through the media” at the 12th awards night of Ghana Journalists Association in Accra.

Defending his points with biblical quotations, Palmer-Buckle likened the role of the media to that of the Old Testament. He said journalist and prophet have the same roles and responsibilities to be the conscience of the nation, the watchman that God had placed on the watchtower of Ghana, to watch over the citizens of the nation, especially, executive, legislature and judiciary.

“The media practitioner, like the prophet must be the one who knows that he or she is accountable to a higher being than to any particular factions of the Ghanaian society,” the Archbishop said.

He said the fact that journalists are accountable to a higher being should enable them to perform their duty to individuals, societies, governments and those governed without blemish.

Archbishop said the sole objective of journalism is “to bring love, unity and order, peace and prosperity, freedom and justice, in fact the total well being of all. By so doing, journalists could communicate that culture of life and civilization of the love the God required of them for the good of the country, whose democracy they were safeguarding.”

Like prophets of God, media practitioners are expected to proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to captives of all forms of injustices and new sight to the politically, culturally and intellectually blind and set the oppressed and marginalised, he said.

He wondered whether Ghanaian journalists have been performing their expected roles of informing, educating and entertaining the society.

"The media practitioner in Ghana today must be a person who is guided by nobility and the quest for virtue, particularly by the supreme good of the people to whom he/she has been sent.”

By S. Makalo in Accra, Ghana

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