The Minister of Youth and Sports, Nii Lantey Vanderpuye, has advised sports journalists to be professional in their reporting to sustain the interest in weightlifting.
At a media seminar organised by the Ghana Weightlifting Federation (GWF) in Accra last Friday, the minister said sports had different characteristics, hence the need for journalists to understand and appreciate them for better reporting.
The seminar, sponsored by the Phoenix Life Assurance, aimed to educate sports journalists to appreciate their role in the development and sustenance of sports in the country.
“Sports is a discipline which has its own characteristics so you need to understand the ‘head’, stomach, and the ‘tail of it,” Nii Lantey said.
He commended the GWF for its effort to educate the new generation of sports journalists, whom he said lacked in-depth knowledge of accurately disseminating information to the public.
In his address, a lecturer at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Dr Kwaku Ofosu-Asare, also advised sports journalists to be fair, accurate and precise in their reporting.
He said sports journalists played a key role in promoting and sustaining the interest of sports, so it was important for them to be fair and balanced in reaching out to the public.
The president of the GWF, Ben Nunoo Mensah, highlighted the need for sports branding, using the successes of weightlifting and cricket as a case study.
He informed the participants about the techniques that accounted for the success of the two brands.
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