HOSTILITIES AGAINST KUMASI RADIO JOURNALISTS AND THEIR IMPACT ON NEWS GATHERING

Abstract

Media hostilities is any unpleasant situation where media personalities are intimidated, assaulted, abused, manhandled whiles conducting their journalistic activities to serve the general public. The purpose of the study was to assess hostilities on Kumasi radio journalists and their impact on news gathering. The study adopted the qualitative method as the research design. Data was collected by using in-depth interview which helped tremendously in obtaining rich and accurate data from subjects. The major findings of this study showed that majority of radio journalists in Kumasi experience hostilities like death threats, verbal and non-verbal assaults and minority of radio journalists in Kumasi experience hostile treatments like curses and ridicule, seizure of equipment and detention. The study also found out that the majority of the journalists were greeted with hostilities by politicians, chiefs and other influential people in the society, as well as police men and security guards. In addition, the majority of the respondent attributed their treatments to fear of public exposure and objective in their reportage. The study finally reached the conclusion that, hostilities on Kumasi radio journalists affect news gathering negatively, through accuracy of information, time of delivery and their sense of judgment and evaluation of news stories.