He said the Institute of Financial and Economic Journalists (IFEJ) provided hope for good journalism, as it helped journalists acquire the requisite knowledge to better educate citizens.

According to him journalists had failed because they lacked knowledge, truth and ethics.

They also did not write in plain language for the people to understand.

He was speaking when he launched the 4th IFEJ Flamingo Awards for Business and Financial Journalism in Accra on Tuesday.  He urged journalists to read more to acquire the knowledge they needed to be effective in their work.

Speaking on the theme of the awards: “Embracing Financial Inclusion and Innovations for Growth and Development,” Mr Thompson said financial inclusion was very critical to poverty alleviation efforts.He said in order to ensure financial inclusion, the goals should be to provide access at a reasonable cost to a full range of financial services, including savings and deposit services, and payment and transfer services, among others.

He noted that services like mobile money were too expensive and needed to be more affordable if it was to achieve its potential for financial inclusion. He also expressed the need for sound and safe institutions governed by clear regulations and industry performance standards, financial and sustainability to ensure continuity and certainty of investment and competition to ensure choice and affordability for clients.

Mr Rayborn Bulley, President of IFEJ, said the critical role of journalists in economic growth, by providing the necessary analysis of issues in the sector.  IFEJ, he said provided training for its members to enable them do more self-initiated, in-depth and analytical stories.  He said there had been significant improvements in reportage in the business and financial sector across the country, with two of the winners of the Flamingo Awards coming from outside Accra.

Dr Adu Anane-Antwi, former Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and chair for the launch, said journalists in Ghana had a real challenge in reporting on business and finance because most of them did not have a background in finance.  “We have a challenge in that you are learning to understand finance and report, whereas elsewhere people get their MBA in finance before they train as journalists and thus understand the issues and are able to bring out the issues during interviews,” he said.

Mr Daniel Koomson, Chair of the Awards Jury, assured participants of the independence of the jury. He advised entrants to ensure that they read the criteria and scoring system for the awards carefully to ensure that their entries were filed correctly.