Daily Graphic (Ghana)
Encyclopedia
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
published in Accra
Accra
Accra is the capital and largest city of Ghana, with an urban population of 1,658,937 according to the 2000 census. Accra is also the capital of the Greater Accra Region and of the Accra Metropolitan District, with which it is coterminous...
, Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
.
The paper was established along with the Sunday Mirror in 1950, by Cecil King
Cecil Harmsworth King
Cecil Harmsworth King was owner of Mirror Group Newspapers, and later a director at the Bank of England .He came on his father's side from a Protestant Irish family, and was brought up in Ireland...
of the London Daily Mirror Group. It is the most widely read daily newspaper in the country. The paper has seen a large number of editors replaced over the course of its history, particularly post independence after a string of successive military coups
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
who sacked editors who opposed the government policies. In 1979 it was renamed the People's Daily Graphic under Jerry Rawlings
Jerry Rawlings
Jerry John Rawlings is a former leader of the Republic of Ghana and now the African Union envoy to Somalia. Rawlings ruled Ghana as a military dictator in 1979 and from 1981 to 1992 and then as the first elected president of the Fourth Republic from 1993 to 2001...
for a few years to "remind the people that it belongs to them".
Being a state owned paper, it regularly covers the government in a favourable light, detailing and encouraging national unity and government policy. In colonial Ghana
Gold Coast (British colony)
The Gold Coast was a British colony on the Gulf of Guinea in west Africa that became the independent nation of Ghana in 1957.-Overview:The first Europeans to arrive at the coast were the Portuguese in 1471. They encountered a variety of African kingdoms, some of which controlled substantial...
under British rule, the paper, which was staffed by local Ghanaians, received large government funding from British banks which led to its high circulation and raising awareness of events to ordinary Ghanaians, more so than Ghanaian owned papers.
The paper, owned by the Graphic Communication Group Limited, also prints two weekly entertainment newspapers, namely The Mirror and Graphic Showbiz. Graphic Sports is the most read sports news in Ghana which is also a product of the company. The company also publishes the Junior Graphic, aimed at a younger audience, to address their concern and to contribute to the nations development.
The other state owned paper is the Ghanaian Times
Ghanaian Times
The Ghanaian Times is a government-owned daily newspaper published in Accra in Ghana. The newspaper was established in 1958....
.