Filed under: News, Interviews, Profiles
As a young man growing up in Ghana, Samuel Agyeman observed the media from afar. He admired the work of Kwaku Sakyi-Addo (Ghana's Anderson Cooper equivalent), and even wrote Sakyi-Addo a letter saying that when he grows up he wanted to be like him. But when Agyeman finally became of age to make his own career decision, he initially went in a very different direction.
He fell into the predictable field of banking after studying Economics and Statistics at the University of Ghana. "Our focus is to just get to the banks because that's where the money is," Agyeman said.
But after a chance meeting with an editor from Metro TV while interning at Ghana's Institute for Economic Affairs, Agyeman was given the opportunity to walk in the footsteps of Sakyi-Addo and Christiane Amanpour, another journalist he had long admired. The editor asked him if he was interested in working with media and after taking one night to think about it, he decided to explore the opportunity.
Five years later, Agyeman is well on his way to becoming himself an accomplished journalist to be admired. As an anchor and reporter for Metro TV, Agyeman has worked on social stories impacting Ghana that have won multiple awards, including The Dag Hammarskjold United Nations Journalism Fellowship Award, which allowed him to work as a United Nation's correspondent. And a report on the homeless population in Ghana's capital of Accra, "Shelter In The City," earned him the award for Best Journalist at the Ghana Journalist Association Awards. As a result, he received a prize package that included an all-expenses paid trip to the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C. to further his studies.
While on a visit to the Huffington Post Media Group offices in New York City last week (one of many media tours he will be taking with the ICJ), we spoke with Agyeman about his burgeoning and already well-decorated career as a journalist in Ghana, what he's learned from United States journalists and the stories that matter most to him.
Jozen Cummings: When you decided to go from banking to journalism, how did people take the news?
Samuel Agyeman: Everybody says that [journalism] is not going to pay, and that's true. Journalists in Ghana bring in about $200 a month, and when you look at the kind of work we do - probably graduated from the same school, probably studied the same subjects that somebody in the banks studied - and the person in the bank is taking home $1,800 or $1,500 and you're taking $200, that's very bad. So many young people interested in journalism tell me they've been told, "You're just wasting your time."
JC: Since you've been in the U.S., what differences have you noticed about the media profession?
SA: People take it seriously here in the U.S. In Ghana, people might [become journalists] for a while and after finding their feet, they get a job in some financial institution. I have learned that I can actually be in this business and grow in it. I know people can really make a life out of this if they do it well.
JC: Tell me about the "Shelter In The City" story that won you the Journalist of the Year Award.
SA: The challenges of the homeless in Ghana had never been covered the way I did it before. People did it in the past, but just by talking about it - people sleep in the streets -- but nobody had really gone out there at night to tell how these people struggle to get a place to sleep. I spent 10 months with them at night [and saw] the sort of problems they go through. There is this particular place -- which nobody knew about then -- it's like a park, pavement, like a station, and people sleep there at night. Hundreds of women sleep there and they go through a lot of problems. I spent time with them in the rains - you have children sleeping under polythene bags, and crying, suffocating, just crying to breathe, but because it's rainy and the mothers can't take the polythene from their heads, they're just left there struggling. I took it to the United Nations, and the UN Habitat had to step in with lots of measures here and there. Now they have a building with about 34-bedrooms that is housing some of these people, other organizations have also given them things like mosquito nets and mattresses. So that was the impact [of the story].
JC: Are these the kind of stories you continue to do for Metro TV?
SA: I'm interested in stories that affect people, the ordinary people. I don't know what story it might be, it might be economics and politics but once it affects society and people, I'm interested in that.
JC: So now what do people think of your career choice to be a journalist?
SA: [Laughs] Now so many people are appreciative. I mean, even before I got the awards, people saw me on TV, they looked at my reports and almost everywhere I go people say, "I saw that report." Even my friends who are medical doctors tell me, "Your job is something else, it's good." I have told some people that I think about going back to school and they say, "Why? Just do this." They like what I'm doing.