SECTOR 2 2.9 Media cover the full spectrum of economic, cultural, political, social, national and local perspectives and conduct investigative stories. “We have a situation where institutions aren’t able to rise above political things.” Investigative journalism is lacking on the media landscape, with most stories being reports of what happened, rather than in-depth investigations. “Ghanaian media don’t help you understand anything.” There is a certain disregard with respect to the coverage of social issues because politics often takes centre stage, “and journalists want to be associated with political news for status.” Although human interest stories are popular, politics dominates news content, and features on health, education and social issues receive little space in the media; unless a political connection can be struck. “If you do a feature story, no matter how interesting it is, they will say ‘oh, it’s too long’. But there was a time we did a political story for 18 minutes. 18 minutes! And they let it through.” In media houses based in regional capitals, broad, local perspectives, are hard to come by. “There is too much reliance on ‘experts’ and not on the people on the ground, and who were affected by the incident. For example, there was a big fire at the trade fair in December [2016]. But we still don’t know the victims.” In terms of geo-economic context, “If you had to go strictly with what the media says, you’d believe that all the bad things happen in poor areas [and] all good things happen in affluent areas.” That said, some media outlets have done a good job in going beyond politics to cover interesting features that speak to the fuller spectrum of topics and incorporate local perspectives. AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER GHANA 2017 37