Abstract:
GAEC‘s mandate to commercialise its research activities has become very crucial and this cannot be achieved without the media. There is, therefore, the need for thorough investigation into GAEC current media relation practice in order to understand journalists‘ perception and what could be done to improve the relations. In line with this, a research on Journalists‘ perception of GAEC‘s media relation was undertaken. This research was intended to answer questions on how much information journalists have about the core activities of GAEC; the extent to which GAEC‘s media relations enable journalists to report on its activities and the extent to which GAEC‘s media relations can be categorized as reactive, proactive or interactive. Qualitative research approach was used to explore current perception of journalists about Ghana Atomic Energy Commission‘s media relations. Purposive and convenient sampling methods were employed and semi-structured interview was us to elicit information from ten (10) journalists who have covered some activities of GAEC. After the recording had been transcribed, coding exercise was applied and the resultant five themes were discussed. The findings were also discussed in the context of the research objectives, as well as some of the tenets of the excellence theory. It was deduced from the responses that journalists have some minimum amount of information from GAEC but the information is not concrete enough. Although journalists agreed to have covered some programmes concerning GAEC and GAEC has found a way of communicating very technical information to the understanding of journalists, it is still clear that adequate capacity has not been built. GAEC‘s media relations cannot be described as proactive or interactive
enough because has failed to have the right publicity that could dispel negative perceptions.
