This article was first published in a weekly staff newsletter of the Kettering Foundation. It describes my experience at forums held in Philadelphia as part of the work towards primaries for mayoral and city council elections. Even though the elections have been held, The Great Expectation Project is continuing with a civic-to-do list for the next mayor of Philadelphia. This is an interesting development for me, coming from an environment in newspapers that only report what has happened and do very little to set an agenda for public officials. This is an example of how a newspaper is setting agenda and creating space for citizens to dialogue.

* * *

Residents of Philadelphia this week went to the primaries to elect a Democratic candidate for the mayor position as well as elect city councilors. These elections came after a highly intense process of engaging the candidates by residents and the media.

In December last year, the Philadelphia Inquirer under its “Great Expectation” project, organized a series of forums to find out what issues were going to take centre stage in the election primaries in the city. The residents identified violence and crime, education, jobs/economic development, taxes and housing.

Citizen journalism has been in the news lately especially during the coverage of the Virginia Tech tragedy and thereafter. The role played by the students in getting the news out and in keeping everyone informed was remarkable. There are those who believe the age of citizen journalism has now fully arrived and those who believe the media is only now reaping the benefits of a citizen-led/citizen-initiated journalism effort that started less than a decade ago.

Gone are the days when big media were the people who got all the exclusive insights when a story broke. Ordinary citizens without press passes and training are now the people who are getting out the news and the professional media is running after them for the details by visiting their blogs, podcasts, inviting people to upload pictures, video and voice clips, etc. Such was the case in the coverage of the Virginia Tech tragedy. Everyone may not be aware that the first video and audio clips of the Virginia Tech incident were not captured by traditional reporters but by a student who used his cell phone. That cell phone recording of the scene was subsequently purchased by CNN. All media organizations went on the Internet to view blogs written by students as a way of updating themselves on the shooting incident.

Jeff Jarvis, veteran journalist and media critic who blogs at “buzzmachine.com” believes that this is the beginning of more changes to come in the architecture of news and media. He observes that there is a benefit to news organizations as they can get more first hand views of events from citizens than from a reporter who filters what needs to be reported. I share in Jarvis’s observation and anticipate an increase in the number of media organizations that put an effort into building a strong bond with their audiences through the Internet as well as other means. I see a kind of symbiotic relationship now emerging between many media organizations and their citizens.

It is without doubt that the Ghanaian media plays a pivotal role in the entrenchment of democratic principles in the country. As the fourth tier of the state, the media does not only play its traditional role of a watchdog, but also serves as a tool for engaging grassroots in participating in governance. Ghana boasts of 137 licensed radio stations, over hundred daily, weekly, biweekly and tri-weekly newspapers and four free-to-air TV Stations. At this rate, one can envision that the media sector is among the high employing sectors in the country.

Ghana’s 1992 constitution guarantees freedom of speech and expression including the right to freedom of the press and other media. The repeal of the Criminal Libel Law in 2001, a law that had impeded the journalistic profession in Ghana, opened the floodgates to private media. This saw the establishment of many newspapers and radio stations in mostly urban areas of the country with radio witnessing the most growth over the period and few more television stations.

I have been following the news of America’s deadliest shooting ever at Virginia Tech with keen interest. My initial reaction was to follow the story like most people as it developed from one Television channel to the other and also on the web. I kept asking myself how this heinous act could have taken place and what sort of person the gunman was? Many of these questions have since been answered with latest insights into the shooting incident. I had my own challenge about what kind of system allows for students to carry guns on school campus.

My curiosity turned surprise as I watched the story unfold. What shocked me most was the way CNN worked tirelessly to find a scapegoat for the massacre on the Virginia Tech campus. These so called experienced reporters of CNN kept asking and insinuating that the school authorities and the police on campus had failed to protect the students and lecturers. I was shocked by the deliberate effort to set people up against each other. It smacks of mischief, definitely not what the ethics of the profession encourages. Fortunately, most students interviewed were indifferent to the ploy. What they were concerned with was the fate of their friends and colleagues, and how soon the healing process was going to start.