By: Karl Furlong
On day one of interning at the Business and Financial Times I was introduced to my peers for the next four weeks: four local interns that make the newsroom run. These young people are required to publish a minimum of three stories per week.
They do this for no compensation: No paycheck, no reimbursement for meals, no reimbursement for travel, no bonuses for high-quality work.
These interns are supported by family members. Emmanuel Akomea has interned with the paper for two years now. He hasbeen told the only way to get on full–time is to continue interning and wait until there’s an opening. But it’s not a sure thing. There are other interns also waiting. And they are all competing for a position that currently doesn’t exist. They are also competing against professional journalists that could apply for the same position once it’s posted.
Emmanuel is supported by his brother and scrapes by through the tradition of “soli” or the “brown envelope.”
Each week interns are sent out to cover events. These are generally news conferences put on by organizations to promote anything from a new training facility to a new product. Essentially, they are PR events that are covered by reports and treated as news. At many of these events envelopes are handed out to the reporters before they leave. Ostensibly, these payments are for transportation, but they are generally generous enough to cover more than the reporter’s daily expenses. A report by Katherine Sabuey Agbemenu and Isaac Tandoh concluded that “’soli, when accepted, elicit favorable reportage and makes stories advertorial news rather than a fact-based news.”
Influence and persuasion are a part of newsrooms around the world. Reporters historically were told that negative stories involving large advertisers would not be printed. Access to politicians becomes hard if they are portrayed in a negative light, and many a reporter has been barred from the changeroomof a professional sports team because of a negative story.
It’s hard to critique reporters who are just trying to scrape by. Jobs are scarce and the employers hold all the power.
I’ve come to Ghana to learn how the media industry operates in West Africa. Understanding how entrenched the culture of soli is has been eye-opening. It’s easy to judge until you spend a little time listening, and listening is what reporting is all about.