Who said journalism is fun?

I began my journalistic career at a Christian-oriented magazine called "New Nation", where I learnt pretty quickly that my idea of `Christianity’ was not necessarily that of all the people I saw in church on Sundays.

Once, we were visited by a well-known Missionary, who asked me what story I’d been working on.

So I boastfully narrated to him, how I’d travelled to a village in “the Northern Territories” and “unmasked” a fetish priest who had been taking people’s money and “prophesying” a rosy future for them.

We entitled the story “How I Deceived The Tongo Fetish” and I was very proud of it because it was my first foray into the world of by-lined, first-person, very descriptive narrative.

Curious, the man asked me:

“How did you ‘deceive’ the fetish?”

I said: "I told the fetish priest that I had my eye on a pretty girl in my town but she didn’t want to have anything to do with me. So could his fetish use its power, kindly, to show me what to do to win her love?

"The fetish priest charged me some money and gave me a series of weird rituals to practice, which (he said) would win the girl for me. But it was all a ruse on my part. No such girl existed! ”

I had a shock coming.

Instead of commending me for what I considered my clever, inventive story, the Missionary sternly pointed out to me that I had, in fact, committed a “sin” by lying to the fetish priest about a girl who did not exist!

What? I was puzzled. I had proved that the fetish priest was full of empty prophecies, hadn’t I? Didn’t that tell people who read the story that there was only one true religion in the world, namely, the Christianity that "New Nation" espoused, and that fetish priests were charlatans who should be avoided like the plague?

In fact, the Missionary was about to go on and pry more deeply into my reasons for inventing the story about a girl who did not exist! For the words “secret lust” softly passed his lips, and I realised immediately that he was about to play the Sigmund Freud on me! But fortunately for me, the telephone rang at that moment and I loudly shouted into it, “I shall be there in five minutes!” (As if a major appointment I had been assiduously seeking, had just been granted.)

I quickly made an excuse and left. I didn't care if psychiatrist Freud thought
me rude or not. I mean, so, as a Christian, one couldn’t fib, even if it was to expose fetishism? Didn't the end justify the means? Great lesson about fishing for compliments from an ascetic Missionary, what?

From New Nation, I went to work in the news section of the Ghana Broadcasting Service (as it was then). The work atmosphere there was as different from what was to be found at a monthly magazine as ink from milk. At the magazine, one suggested a story at the monthly editorial conference, and if it was accepted, one had about two whole weeks to turn it in.

In the newsroom of the Ghana Broadcasting Service, we regarded every minute as its own deadline. Stories came from the teleprinter at their own rate, to be subbed immediately (with the words counted) and included in the pile of stories waiting to be chosen for broadcast in the next news bulletin.

The news bulletin had to be quite ready at least half an hour before its scheduled broadcast time, because the news readers had to have adequate time to rehearse the items before they read them on air.

What was worst of all was that if you subbed a story – be it from the printer or from a reporter – YOU had to be sure that it was absolutely accurate.

Dates, and the names of people and places, were the most troublesome to check and get right. For if you broadcast a wrong name or date, someone would ring up the station almost immediately to complain. And yet we regarded it as a hated taboo to make corrections on air. So, sub-editors had to anticipate corrections and call people they thought would be knowledgeable about particular subjects, to check whether the station had got all its information regarding particular stories, totally right.

To emphasise how important it was for us to get things right, we one day got a telephone call on our direct line, shortly after the one o’clock news had been broadcast.

The editor on duty, who took the call, was called Ben Sackey. He was an experienced hack, who had once served as the news editor of the Ghana Daily Graphic.

The voice at the other end of the telephone said, “Good afternoon. This is the Prime Minister....” [This was, at the time, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first Prime Minister!)

Ben Sackey thought it was a prankster, for why would the Prime Minister bypass the officials in charge of Government information and call us direct?

But so well-trained was Ben Sackey in a profession in which everything is possible that he nevertheless asked the voice politely: “What can I do for you, please?”

The voice replied, “You said in your news broadcast that the place we are going to build the dam is called "Konsommo". But it isn’t "Konsommo"!

It is "Akosombo!” And he spelled it out: “A-K-O-S-O-M-B-O”.

Ben Sackey carefully wrote it down and thanked the voice at the other end of the telephone. As a parting shot, though, he told the voice: “I don’t believe I’ve been talking to my Prime Minister!”

The man at the other end chuckled and said, “It doesn’t matter whether you believe I am the Prime Minister or not. Just check the name and see whether you’ve got it right!" And he rang off. Yes, Kwame Nkrumah was that type of person. He took a keen personal interest in everything relating to the development of Ghana.

After the call, Ben Sackey called the Volta River Commission and confirmed with them, the spelling we’d been given by the voice on the phone. From then on, we routinely checked facts with institutions, whenever we were to broadcast anything about them.

Needless to say, this practice made the GBS of the time very authoritative, and when someone said, “I heard it on the radio”, everyone knew it was the gospel truth.

With such a background, I don’t play with my facts, and I was extremely annoyed, recently, when someone who was subbing a column of mine sent me an email saying that a “factual error” had been found in my copy and had been corrected.

I was doubly annoyed when I found that the sub-editor had misspelt my first name as “Cameroon”!

What? Someone who couldn't correctly spell the name of the paper’s own columnist was accusing me of having committed a "factual error?"

TO BE CONTINUED!