Veteran media practitioner and Managing Editor of The Insight, Kwesi Pratt Jnr, has urged media organisations and journalists not to reduce journalism to a contest for attention.

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He said the duty of journalists was to establish what the public needed to know.

Speaking at the 77th anniversary symposium of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) in Accra last Wednesday, Mr Pratt, who is also the Founder of Pan African Television, said journalism must be guided by professional judgement in an age when digital platforms often reward attention with controversy, outrage, and sensationalism.

“The journalist's task, however, is not simply to maximise attention, but to determine what the public needs to know,” he stated.

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The veteran journalist stressed that speed should not override accuracy in the digital era, adding that being first to publish did not guarantee impact.

“A journalist could be the first to publish a story and still be wrong, while another journalist could publish later and produce the most important story of the day. The internet rewards speech. Journalism requires judgment,” he added.

Mr Pratt urged media organisations to uphold the professional benchmarks that distinguished journalism from general online content and to resist pressures from digital immediacy that compromised those standards.

He added that the central challenge for contemporary journalism had shifted from information access to the verification of truth within an oversaturated information environment.

Mr Pratt argued that media credibility hinged on five pillars: accuracy, verification, fairness, courage, and investigative scrutiny of influential persons and institutions.

The 77th GJA anniversary symposium was on the theme "GJA at 77: Building on our legacy, advancing ethical journalism, and shaping the future of digital media”.

📰 Source: Joy Online Ghana