Is post event reportage important to event organisers these days? If
they do matter, must it favour them at all? Shouldn’t people be allowed
to report on an event they witnessed without being coaxed?
Lots of events or shows require serious consideration and as such,
enough time invested into their planning to ensure their success.
For events such as Miss Ghana, Miss Malaika, Ghana Music Awards, 4Syte
TV Music Videos Awards, Ghana Meets Naija, RTP Awards, Ghana Movie
Awards, Music of Ghanaian Origin (MOGO), Night With The Stars and such
other big events, a great deal of time is spent on planning.
It is not an easy task to put together a team to plan and work round
the clock for major events like those mentioned above. Depending on the
degree of importance of the event, it may take months or sometimes years
of planning and preparation for a show to be put together. But it all
does not end when the show comes off.
After working tirelessly to pull their shows through, majority of
organisers, seem not to care about or show interest in events that
happen afterwards.
Among occurrences after shows include post event reportage. This is an
important function that is not given much attention or at times largely
ignored.
The job of critiquing personalities and events people on television and
radio dissect and discuss various entertainment issues that had come up
in the week.
Others too write stories and feature articles in the newspapers and others write blogs about events on the internet.
If it is your job to talk or write about people to make income, be
prepared to take insults or criticisms from the followers of the people
you talk or write about or from the people you critique.
The reviewer must develop a thick skin to be able to do what some of us
are doing. If you criticise people, you should be ready to be lambasted
as well.
In the field of criticising showbiz personalities you may make enemies
as a matter of course. Much of the time, when a person who gets
criticised fails to take into account the thing that were talked about,
they regard the critic as ‘someone who is trying to pull them down’.
The critic automatically becomes a person to hate. I have been
stereotyped as one. Uncle Nab, the Editor of Graphic Showbiz told me few
months back, “Ebenezer, don’t worry, these things come with the job”.
Surely it does!
Steadily, this phenomenon is creeping into the entertainment industry
in Ghana. However, it is said that those who take interest and delight
in discussing or speaking out so that certain things we do wrong are
corrected, are the people who truly have us at heart.
It is in our best interest that our parents or superiors reprimand us
when we go wrong. Such rebukes are meant to correct us and not
necessarily to kill our spirit.
This new phenomenon that is slowly getting into the showbiz industry by
which critics and reviewers are seen in a bad light is not doing the
industry any good.
On the other hand, write-ups and articles that are done to review or
criticise shows must be embraced and accepted because they serve in many
ways to bring about improvement.
A show can be said to be successful but success is relative. That is
why a post event reportage becomes imperative to the event organiser. A
show can be successful in the eyes of the organiser but the views of
others ought to be sought for any flaws or lapses that were not
detected.
Hence a post event report or a critique of an event should not be seen
as an attempt to run the organiser down or perhaps arouse hostility of
their chance at attracting sponsorship for subsequent events.
Events organisers can benefit from a report that brings their flaws and
shortcomings to fore. After all, the onus lies with them to bring
correction to situations where they went wrong and work on improving on
such areas in future.
When a report is negative it only goes to show that certain things were
not done right for which the organiser must take notice.
Reports criticising events can be blunt and critical but it is only to
show that organisers needs to do a lot more work to perfect their act.
Instead of fighting, insulting or blacklisting people who point out
shortcomings, any anger that there is must be channeled into doing the
right things suggested by the report.
Last week I placed a call to a colleague who was acting as a media
liaison to an event organiser to talk about an upcoming show which the
company was preparing to put up. I was told bluntly that I had been
‘blacklisted’ by the company.
Yes, I had been blacklisted and my crime was that I had criticised an
earlier event they organised in this same column. What it meant is that,
I will be denied certain privileges, access or recognition to any of
their shows, for now and in the future.
In fact, several media personnel have also been blacklisted because
they criticised one event or another. Perhaps, is it about time people
sat down and appreciated those who are bold to tell them of their flaws
rather than to listen to sycophants who will tell them otherwise in
order to receive favours from them.
Severally colleagues have been blacklisted because a show was bad and
they reported just that. This doesn’t augur well for an industry which
is growing.
How can the industry grow to its full potential when event organisers
expect to be shielded and lauded even when they go wrong? Is that how to
grow an industry?
