Newspaper Coverage of Parliament of Ghana: A Study of the Daily Graphic and Daily Guide Newspapers

Abstract

The study was designed and carried out to investigate, through content analysis, how the Ghanaian media reports Parliament and the extent to which it provides citizens with a broad range of information, interpretation and debate on national issues. It was undertaken against the background of the fact that Ghana returned to a multi-party democracy since 1993 and as in any democracy, the media is believed to play a public sphere role by informing citizens and helping them engage in public discourses. The focus of this research was not the numerical incidence of newspaper coverage of Parliament but the nature of coverage, particularly the extent to which reportage of the legislature provides information, interpretation and debate on issues that affect citizens. The method used in this study is content analysis. Seventy-two (72) editions of both the Daily Graphic and the Daily Guide newspapers and in all, Ninety (90) news items were content analysed. The study established that though the media in Ghana does inform citizens about what is happening in Parliament, it falls far short of educating them on the meaning and significance of the facts deriving there from. The study further revealed that the newspapers do not provide context, background and/or interpretation to the facts. It also revealed that newspaper content in Ghana lacks the kind of policy, political and operational information contrived to inform public opinion, empower citizens and encourage wide and inclusive debate about issues of social, economic and political importance.