Kwame Boateng should have won Journalist of the Year - Israel Laryea

Popular broadcast journalist, Israel Laryea, says Multimedia colleague Seth Kwame Boateng deserved to have won the Journalist of the Year award at the 2017 Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) awards.

This year’s GJA awards was successfully held last Saturday, with journalists from various media houses being awarded for their impeccable works.

The biggest award on the night which is the Journalist of the Year, however, went to host of Citi FM’s Breakfast Show, Bernard Koku Avle.

Israel Laryea admits Bernard Avle was a worthy recipient of the award, but believes his colleague Seth Kwame Boateng would have been better placed to win it should the year under review have been considered.

“Considering the year under review, it should have been Seth Kwame Boateng, but Bernard Avle deserves it per his track record,” the ace journalist said on Starr Chat with Bola Ray.

“Okay so for Bernard Avle again [it is] not so much about the year under review, he has a track record and I’m saying he probably should have been recognized some time back.

“The work that Seth Kwame Boateng did with the mother and baby unit at the Okomfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, he did extensive work, it wasn’t his sole effort, he had a whole team backing him but that was great work considering the year under review.”

He further stated that the standards of the GJA awards have dropped when compared to previous years.

In his view, the awards were more prestigious and had more credible winners than it has in recent times.

“It was a lot more prestigious, because the kind of people who emerged as journalist of the year, were people that you look at them without a doubt, because they had the track record. They’ve done extensive work so that when they are pronounced journalist of the year, there’s usually no question about them,” Laryea said.

The Multimedia journalist also touched on the performance of GJA president Affail Monney, insisting he has been a bit disappointed in his tenure.

According to him, “it doesn’t appear as if the leadership is keen in supporting journalists” who are under its wing.

“We used to have some really vibrant GJA president’s back then like Gifty Affenyi-Dadzie, Mr Kabral Blay-Amihere…I’ve had a few disappointments with him (Affail Monney). There have been some instances having to do with the work done by Manasseh Azure Awuni and pronouncements that have come up about him. There was also that incident that happened at the 37 military hospital involving one journalist and the pronouncements that came out after that,” he added.