If you really want to reform journalism do this…

I’m in Ghana where my meetings illustrate a zeal to reframe styles of storytelling and own narratives. The slogan, “It’s time we told our own stories” punctuates every meeting. It’s a phrase a group of multi-hyphenates in Britain are pushing too. But why now?

The obvious suggest “we”, a reference to innovators, diverse groups e.g. Black people, have been denied this. Truth is it’s been an ongoing process but its visibility is becoming more visible. The executives behind a Pan African Heritage museum, which is attracting international attention are squarely behind this.

Paul Ninson from the Dikan Center is a one man international photography curator who exemplifies this with a passion. His studio is a wonder. Rare photos of Ghana, rare books, a classroom to educate, and a strong sense of direction.

But what does this mean in journalism and news? I’ve been invited to speak about this next week.

News offers itself with constraints; some good, such as a duty to tell the truth. This value leads to a spectrum of parameters, such as due impartiality, objectivity, balance and fairness.

Then there’s the methodology in TV News cooked up in the 1950s that presents little room for change. Journalists bind themselves to the package- it’s the trojan horse for journalism storytelling. A narrative of he said, she said.

Clintonesque like, “it’s the textual information stoopid”. The pictures or impact of them in the package very often trail the information.

Hence how do we tell our own story here? Simply within the package the structure draws out the “story” but can blithely ignore the impact to diverse e.g. Black audiences.

That doesn’t mean finding a spurious angle where there is none, but a drive to see news though the eyes of an audience neglected. It can be a difficult task if you can’t see across the brook. Last week in the UK a national Breakfast presenter was aghast that Afro hair could draw ire from within schools. “It never crossed his mind”, he said.

Journalism thus requires empathy, a greater empathy, in an attempt to live outside of your experiences if you’ve not walked in the subject’s boots. Empathy is often a bolt on for the audience, a side show to the whims of the journalism storyteller feted for their brilliance in turns of phrases.

How do we tell our own stores? If you’re Ghanaian working in journalism in Ghana, you likely are, though the challenge of telling a wider, less elite-orientated subject-journalism persists. What about the young man who’s been swindled out of his life savings by officials illegally impounding his car and demanding bribes. Those stories find less traction in a news belt surveying the ongoings of parliament and the economy. No one said it was an easy task.

Telling our own stories then tends to have a major currency when the society is culturally heterogeneous. That is when one group appears to enjoy benefits and attention, whilst another doesn’t.

The Duchess of Sussex is a magnet for the English press to say as they please. She took to a documentary where she could tell her side. But why not in journalism? Lack of empathy, lack of diversity, these are contributing factors.

For Ghana’s future jewel in the crown, there’s much terrain to be covered poking holes at caked narratives that are normalised. The slave trade and its legacy is a prime example for eking out stories of the other side. A brace of books are doing this, such a ‘Stamped from Beginning” by Ibram X Kendi and ‘Black Britain” by David Olusoga. Its new museum is leaning that way.

Content matters then in shaping perception, but the style of storytelling is the hidden gem that remains elusive. There is a fixed universal style within that package that much like what we believe democracy is, is unimpeachable. That is there is a way of telling stories in journalism that resists any change, particularly in view of the behemoth custodians that push its form.

But here’s where Ghanaians and my eye on journalism storytelling could prevail. Society has been here before in literature, art, music and architecture in which forms atrophied and individuals becoming movements in various cultures cultivated their own approach to engaging with audiences. Neorealism for the Italians in film, Afro beat in music, Bauhaus design in Germany, and spiritual, blues-like writing forms that would emerge from the pen of African Americans like James Baldwin.

In each and everyone of these there were styles that preceded them and proceeded too, but a status quo was challenged. Have we really stopped in our tracks to argue there is no other way to tell news stories for audiences? Of course not. But questions need to be asked around purpose and motive? What is journalism storytelling for in a societies like now? It’s not an easy question but it reframes thinking.

I want you to feel how I feel said one journalist, who inspires and reframes a journalism art form that is looking out for audiences. It’s called Cinema Journalism.

But until a movement rises, much like the Impressionists undid renaissance painting, we’re by our flotsam.

But style too in an intricate matrix, shaped by institution, culture, time, individual and tech. Tech often acts as an enabler, shortening the time between creation and production, and where its cheap providing a democratisation effect. But its hegemony for transformation should be handled cautiously.

Too often head first tech has been “The Shinning” wooing users whilst masking what lay ahead in is social apocryphal. Twitter was the social glue, then it morphed somewhat into a social mind meld of addiction for mean spirited.

Mobile journalism offers a salutary lesson. Does mobile journalism constitute a new form upending narrative. No! Not really, for everything the phone can do, say for instance in intimacy in film language, this was achieved long ago in the minturisation of camera equipment. This is not to deny its efficacy, but mobile as the fastest way to change narrative, is a stretch unless the filmmakers are given a sense of the cognitive push needed.

It’s time to tell our own stories then. It requires delving into culture, philosophies, language and challenging the status quo in an internationalised world. Yet not only can it be done, it’ll happen. It’ll happen because history has shown it to be so. History works on a long tail, but you have to continue to push, and within the walls of academia, and commercial enterprises in Ghana, there’s equally an appetite for this.