Mushrooming of Impostor Journalists
In Sierra Leone, journalism seems to have become a free-for-all profession which every Jack and Jill can practice. In fact, this country is now witnessing a high population of impostor journalists whose main duty is to harass investors and public servants for money just to go and buy a plate of cookery.
The proliferation of impostor journalists has become very alarming and has become a concern to many well meaning citizens, non-citizens and serious-minded institutions. One such institution that has raised concern over the multiplication of fake journalists is the Youth Development Empowerment Association (YEDA) which has written a strongly worded correspondence to several press houses and other stakeholders condemning the unfortunate situation and calling on all concerned authorities to address it to save the name of the noble profession.
Out of all the professions, journalism is the profession that has been the most vulnerable to quackery and impersonation. This noble profession is being dragged to the gutter mostly by individuals who have no business to do with it by virtue of their academic impotency and lack of integrity. The profession has been undergoing a systematic bastardization right under the noses of the relevant authorities who have been doing very little to protect the profession the name of which is being besmeared everyday by roaming impostors masquerading as journalists. This is not a joking matter.
There has been little or no distinction between a journalist and a non-journalist. In this country, you need little or no academic qualification to be a journalist; as long as you can speak vernacular over a radio station and write faulty English in any newspaper, you become a full time journalist the next day. The impostor journalists are those who are not even journalists but roam around with convincing identity cards as journalists and the gullible masses are at their mercy. Most of these impersonating journalists have never written a single article nor contributed in any way to information dissemination but purport being big journalists targeting unsuspecting investors, public servants and corporate institutions threatening them for commercial reasons.
The Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ), the Independent Media Commission (IMC) and other concerned authorities must not sweep under the carpet such an opprobrious situation. There is the urgent need to rid the profession of the roaming quack and impostor journalists who are hell bent on bringing the noble profession into disrepute.
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amjata
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When you have the likes of Slyvia Blyden parading around as journalists only because she owns tabloid newspaper, then what do you expect. This woman has no formal training in journalism but she is allowed by the powers that be to publish ridiculous stories about the opposition or people that disagree with her twisted views, and she is hailed as an opinion maker, common give me a break. Until people like bylined are told to stop misrepresenting themselves as journalists the problem u describe will get more serious, and we know what that does to our nascent democracy.
11th August 2015