Gary Al-Smith on joining JOY FM from Citi FM, his love for Shatta Wale, social advocacy, and working with George Addo Jnr.

 “I know what I am, and I know what I do well,” confidently says FBI Agent Jackie Rohr played by Kevin Bacon on the American cable network, SHOWTIME’s Boston crime drama ‘City on A Hill.”

This quote largely represents Sports Journalist, Gary Al-Smith’s unapologetic conviction about his qualities and capabilities.

A real-life, more apt or perhaps a better representation is Ghanaian artiste, Shatta Wale, who the JOY FM presenter is a fan of.

“Talent is never enough and nothing encapsulates that for Shatta (Wale) than his recent collaboration with Beyonce. That is exactly the kind of thing I am talking about. It is not about the talent,” says Al-Smith to OnAir Magazine regards his admiration of Wale. 

“Yes, along the way, I have my own beef with him. Some of his things are cringe-worthy but at the core of his being is a guy who is talented, who works hard, understands his craft, knows his strengths, knows his weaknesses, amplifies his strengths, occasionally allows his weaknesses to overshadow him but ultimately a human.”

Al-Smith has every reason to be confident and unapologetic – his growing body of work is akin to a sprawling mansion in an affluent neighbourhood in any part of the world.

He got his start in the journalism field at age 19 doing a series of interviews for BBC Focus In Africa whilst studying at the Ghana Institute of Journalism in 2007.

Since then, he has reported and written for global platforms including ESPN, SuperSport, The New York Times, CNN, The Guardian, and Aljazeera.

On the local front, he’s had stints with Citi FM, Vibe FM (now Live FM), Skyy TV, Metro TV, and TV3.

Al-Smith’s interest to “change policy and behaviours through social advocacy” has seen him butt heads with ‘powers that be’ but he has no regrets about his edgy persona courting him enemies because of his thoughts on sports, political and social issues.

“Like I said, just like Shatta Wale, you can hate us, you can adore us but you cannot ignore us. And that is fine by me. I don’t need your love, I need your respect. And I am not going to apologize for it.”

He adds: “If you don’t like me and you meet me on the street, you know that if I sit on radio and television and I espouse my views, I do it professionally. Professionally I am fair to people so you respect me. I don’t need you to love me and that is okay with me. That is what I appreciate about the guy (Wale) his stance of him against the world is something that resonates with me as well.”

Al-Smith exclusively shared with OnAir Magazine why he made the shock move to MultiMedia Group Limited-owned JOY FM from rivals Citi FM in 2015, his work as an Ambassador/influencer with UNICEF, growing partnership with George Addo Jnr. and a lot more.

 

OnAir (OA): In 2013, you stated your goal was to work with internationally recognized media houses, and also create local content that is relevant to the international market, six years down the line; would you say you’ve achieved your goal?

Gary Al-Smith (GAS):  You can never achieve that fully because there is always an insatiable appetite to do more. But during the period, I have been doing a lot of these aligned to those goals so I think it is part of the reason why I feel a bit fine when I look back. It helps me feel I am doing the right thing. Take this past Africa Cup of Nations, for example as I strive to do with every major international tournament, apart from providing relevant content for whichever media house I work for, I also look to do so for the global media outlets. I was able to do that for Eurosport, Talk Sport and the BBC, which isn’t bad, all things considered.

 

OA: If you have to a great extent achieved your goal, is there a reason why you are still doing this?

GAS: Improvement is an everyday thing – and you have to challenge yourself. I have not reached my goal.  Also, you have to realize that I am driven to do this job by passion. But this is a job that would put food on your table, so once you stop then it means you’re going to do something else! The passion would not allow me to stop, although my education allows me to do other things. But I like this job – it is paying the bills and it is filling in the spaces where the passion is concerned.

Before you ask, this is what I intend to do for some time to come because for a lot of our senior colleagues in the past, you see that by the time they hit their 30s or 40s, factors like economic conditions, family, and other stuff compels them to look over the ledge, over the fence at some corporate job or corporate affairs job. Thankfully, my passion is able to bring in enough for me not to think about that now, or in the foreseeable future.

 

OA: Say for whatever reason you decide to stop doing this, or touch wood, you are no longer alive; would you be satisfied with what you’ve done so far?

GAS: Yeah. There is more to be done but for now, I think that I have really given it my best shot in a lot of ways. If I were to leave, it may be for one reason or another. It would not be because of a lack of effort.

 

OA: In 2015, you joined Joy FM from Citi FM. According to an enewsgh.com report, your job was to reposition the Joy Sports brand to make it attractive again. Would you say you’ve achieved beyond what your employers expect of you?

GAS: I joined a team of people who are from different background experiences so I would imagine that I was brought here to augment the efforts. Obviously, there were reasons why I was brought here. If somebody says it was to make the brand attractive again, that is a very subjective concept…

 

OA: Add more bite to what they were already doing?

GAS: Personally, when I was thinking at the time, ‘Why do they want me?’ I thought that because of my punchy, blunt, direct style. And that is what I have done on radio, on TV, and via our digital media. I do not hold back, I move. I confront issues. I’m rarely diplomatic on issues of public interest. I like to instigate, to engender action.

I came in February 2015. I think I’ve been allowed to be myself. And being myself is to be daring, to be edgy, to be unconventional, to push limits, and to push boundaries. Whether that has made the team attractive, the audience would have to decide because we are a team of eight or so across radio, TV, and online. I’m satisfied with what I’ve been able to do so far with the Multimedia Group.

A principal reason why I joined MGL was because of the synergy it afforded. They have a huge TV, radio, and online presence. OmniMedia, the operators of Citi FM, didn’t have that synergy at the time.  The power of Citi FM radio and online was not fully translated onto television the way the MultiMedia Group was. I came here purely as a career move, and I work with a team.

Some will say Joy Sports was probably not edgy… again that is subjective but I like to think that we are an edgy brand. We like to punch at issues of public interest; some people prefer the diplomatic style, but I always say if you want to be cosy with decision-makers then journalism isn’t for you!

One of my biggest strengths, I think, is fusing content across the board on radio, television, and online, and that is what I have brought to the team. And I hope that it has been able to make the team great.

OA: Talking about being yourself. Sometime this year, you posted an apology on Facebook for putting out wrong information. Is there a reason why you felt that needed to be done?

GAS: Journalism, particularly in this digital media age always has the power to bring you back and to refer you. Your inconsistencies will come at you faster than you even blink. I apologized because I wanted to be fair to the people I reported on. I wanted to respect my audience who may not talk, but quietly may not have taken me seriously again.

The story is simple: I did put out information that turned out to be 70 per cent correct and 30 per cent wrong. But it emerged later that the 30 per cent that was wrong was significant, so I thought the right thing to do was to own up. And you might have seen the response to my apology – it was overwhelmingly positive.

I like to think that people appreciate that over the period, I have been consistent, and I have been honest with them, and so on. That is my style. If I get it wrong, I would apologize. That is what my mentors taught me and that it is not up for debate.

There’s a trending video of [Sports journalist] Dan Kwaku Yeboah, and myself from 2014. In that video, we are drilling [former GFA spokesperson] Ibrahim Saani Daara about the secrecy surrounding the budget for a tournament. Years on, when I watch that video, I ask myself if I have been consistent if I stand by the same principles. The answer is a resounding yes.

 

OA: Talking of Dan Kwaku Yeboah, he was once a fierce critic of the Nyantakyi administration as an outsider as it were. As part of the current team managing football in Ghana, he defends just about everything even if it is wrong, do you fear you would be caught in that web?

GAS: No, I won’t. I will tell you why I’m not afraid to say I won’t be caught in Kwaku Yeboah’s web. There are some jobs across the world you run from. If you look at the United States, if I were Sarah Sanders and Donald Trump came calling for me to be his press secretary, I would not take it. If Boris Johnson came and said I should be his press secretary, I would not take it. If a football administration here asks me to be their spokesperson, I would use certain litmus tests: what is the public appeal of this administration? How did they come into the office? Was it legitimate? Was it fair? Was it something that the general public was okay with? How is my appointment going to be done? Is it going to be shrouded in controversy? Is it going to be done in the right way? 

Because elsewhere in the world, we have seen people from big media houses who have transitioned into these jobs and it has never been a problem because the jobs are fairly advertised. They fairly apply and so on. A recent, classic example of a high-level person who got muddled in this thing was the venerable Ben Dotsei-Malor.

People, for the life of them, could not understand why he decided to join the [ex-president John] Mahama government. It was a poisoned chalice from the start but credit to Uncle Ben, he handled it with dignity the whole way through.

When he realized that this was not on, he quickly jumped and went back to the United Nations.

Dan Kweku Yeboah was in that situation, and in his case, a lot of us his colleagues told him ‘no, don’t take it’ because it was as clear as daylight, he was entering a territory where he would be gagged in the next few weeks. Why he took it? That is his choice and we are all responsible for our career choices. And so if you ask me, I won’t be caught.

Maybe I may be given an official appointment for something, but I won’t be caught in a situation like that. Kojo Oppong Nkrumah is the minister of information but because of the way he did his work as a media practitioner, you really can’t hit him with the same kind of stick you are hitting Dan with. There are differences; everything is in the nuances. Kojo regularly gets praised for the way he conducts himself though he is now a politician. Obviously, people would say that ‘oh he is towing a certain line’ but generally his approach is different.

OA: You comment on several national and social issues in Ghana. What is the reason behind the decision not to allow yourself to be boxed in, or restricted to talking about sports only?

GAS: This has been my style from the beginning. I try to read wide and be informed, to be an active citizen. It is what makes my style appealing to many. I am aware that people want sports journalists not to have a take on anything else. That’s ok. You may hate me for this, you may adore me for this, but you cannot ignore me.

Let’s get some context. We journalists should not be the news. Report the news and let it do the talking. However, I am a sports journalist, and sport anywhere in the world has never been situated in a vacuum. Without politics deciding how much money and resource sports should get, sports would be nothing. A sports journalist has as much right to question the source of that money and resource as much as anyone.

It is fear that stops a lot of us – and I am not just talking sports – but those in other specialized fields from going into the political arena. I do not do what you would call hardcore politics, you notice I tow a very fine line. Social issues are things that bother us.

For example, this year, I have been consistent in saying that the First Lady [Rebecca Akufo -Addo] is doing a remarkable job with the health facilities. And it just blows my mind how she can do so much when she is not the minister. I make it open and everybody knows that, that is my stance on it. Conversely, I am completely at a loss at how the nation is going to borrow more money, but we are going to use a chunk of that money to build the national cathedral.

I don’t get it! So when I hit at those things, and I come and talk about my sports as well, I think they all dovetail into each other.

Remove the sports from my title (sports journalist) and what do you have? Journalist! Remove the sports from my title and I am a broadcaster, I am a reporter, I am a presenter. That is what my training is and I like to think that people do not venture into those places because they really fear that their intellect will not be enough to talk about those issues. I have a lot of pride in my intellect. If I have no idea about a topic, I won’t touch it. And if I don’t know, I would go and read to be able to talk about it. You may see me on sports programs daily but as my colleagues in the newsroom will tell you, I can have a pound-for-pound conversation with you on many social issues.

If you put me on NewsFile today, I could sit there. If you told me this Saturday, I would be on Newsfile, let’s talk about this topic, I could do it. If you ask me to host Newsfile, I could host it, because it is a show that deals with issues of the day. Am I abreast? Yes. Do I know the basis of questioning? I do. What else is left? To read, read, read. I am not shy to say, and I know people would say ‘he is too known,’ but I am fine with that label. I am not shy to say I am not your ordinary journalist because I am not your ordinary sports journalist. It is what sets me apart and I am not going to apologize for it.

 

OA: You and the JOY Sports team have shared online a petition for the Minister of sports to detail expenditure at the 2019 AFCON. What has been the response from the sports community?

GAS: What we are doing at the JOY Sports team is to elevate the discussion based on our institutional memory. We do know that issues like this, just like other facets of national conversations will be quickly swept under the carpet after the next big breaking news topic comes in. Our pledge is to keep [the fact that the government spent $4.5 million at the Africa Cup] fresh, front and center in the minds of Ghanaians. And that is why we decided to make it a petition instead. These are things that you would regularly see with the political side of things but again it goes back to your question of why am I not afraid to speak about national issues. The monies we are talking about here are monies for Ghana. They are not for sport-loving Ghanaians. Whichever money we took for that AFCON was not taken from the sports ministry’s budget. It was, as we know now, taken from the Consolidated Fund. That fund is basically Ghana’s piggy bank.

 It is our collective ‘susu’ box so if you, a political journalist look on as I, a sports journalist talk about the fact that our sports ministry has gone into our piggy bank and taken the money that belongs to all of us, and you keep mute because it is just sports, then that is your problem. We elevated this discussion to the level of a petition because we believe that sport has become a very easy route for our policymakers and administrators to create, loot, and share.

And so by putting this at the front and center, we want to make it a centre of national discussion. The reaction has been positive.

 

OA: How far do you want to take this? What’s the plan?

GAS: We want to take it as high as we can because, again, the money is not for us. It is a national trust and so if we are asking for accountability, it is not because we just want to leave it at the level of radio. We just want radio to get results. We want our radio to get results because we are getting into an area where we are all going to have kids or a lot of our age group are going to have kids. And the question I keep asking myself: “If I’ve got a child and the child asks me in 20 years ‘Daddy, this AFCON money thing that happened, people reported it and they talked about it and left it. What did you do?’”

Hopefully, I can point them to the body of work that I did. That is what the Joy Sports team wants to do here as well, that it is not just a sporting discussion. We will take it as far as it goes and if it dies a natural death, fine.

 

OA: When all is said and done, what do you hope to achieve with this petition?

GAS: Petitions by their nature are done to elicit action. We want to have a proper probe because we know that if nobody demands that probe, this would be swept under the carpet. The first thing is, we want parliament to act. It was in parliament that the minister gave the general breakdown of the AFCON. We want the parliament to call him back and say that the breakdown was not enough, so please come and furnish Ghanaians with the actual, proper breakdown of everything that was spent. Then we can move on from there.

Once the sports minister does that, it would take on a life of its own and our work will be done. Because of the way we practice democracy and governance here, if we don’t bring the attention of the people who can bring the sports ministry to come and explain, this issue would die in two weeks and that is what we want to avoid.

OA: You are a known fan of Shatta Wale which irks some people because of your status. Apart from his music, why do you admire him?

GAS: I like Shatta Wale for loosely the same reason I like Cristiano Ronaldo. I identify with a common thread that goes through both of them that talent is never enough. And for me, that is a personal inspiration. Talent is never enough and nothing encapsulates that for Shatta than his recent collaboration with Beyonce. That is exactly the kind of thing I am talking about. It is not about the talent. No! And he wrote a recent Twitter post that people think that he is in this business to make people happy.

He is not in this music business for that, but people don’t get it. Yes, along the way, I have my own beefs with him. Some of his things are cringe-worthy but at the core of his being is a guy who is talented, who works hard, understands his craft, knows his strengths, knows his weaknesses, amplifies his strengths, occasionally allows his weaknesses to overshadow him. Ultimately, a human.

Even the song that he did with Beyonce, chale some way [laughs]. Musically, their song, ‘Already’ is a tune you can sing along to.

Nobody in this town knows better than Beyonce. She looked at the entire 30 million people of Ghana, our entire entourage of musicians we have in Ghana, and chose Shatta Wale. If you don’t like it, go and burn.

That is what I appreciate about the guy. His stance of him against the world is something that resonates with me as well. Like I said, just like Shatta Wale, you can hate us, or you can adore us, but you cannot ignore us. And that is fine by me. I don’t need your love, your respect will do. And I am not going to apologize for it. If you don’t like me and you meet me on the street, you know that if I sit on the radio and television and I espouse my views, I do it professionally. Professionally, I am fair to people so you respect me. I don’t need you to love me, and that is okay with me.

 

OA: Let’s talk about your growing partnership with George Addo Jr.

GAS; When I joined the Multimedia Group, George and I were just colleagues. A year later or so, the team decided to run commentaries for the Euro 2016 football championships. We drew a schedule.

I was supposed to be a commentator on some of the games. After I did a few, it was clear that I was handicapped in a specific way: my voice.

I have a large vocabulary, so I thought commentary would be a breeze. Wrong. I am not biologically wired for it because when I speak for five or ten minutes, my voice tapers off and it doesn’t sound great on radio commentaries. By accident, George – who can keep a consistent voice for 90 minutes – and I got paired on one of the games.

And that was it. We hit off as a commentary team; he, the main man, and me, his wingman.  When I am paired with him, it is my job to ensure that George comes out best. Everything I do is geared toward ensuring that my main commentator gives off his best, and that is fine by me. 

You cannot persuade me that I can do radio commentary as well as George does because I know that I am biologically not vocally equipped. And that is it.

If it is television commentary, that does not need a play-by-play, I possibly could. But for radio commentary where I need to give a running account and descriptive account for 90 minutes, no, I can’t. I summarize because I have word power, I can paint pictures in your mind, and I do that very well. He, on the other hand, is the best at what he does in the country at the moment.

 

OA: Beyond journalism, you’ve become somewhat of a poster boy for UNICEF in Ghana.

In keeping with what we’ve spoken about already, my work with UNICEF simply dovetails into my personality. When UNICEF got in touch in 2016, that they needed me to be one of their influencers, even I was surprised. I mean, sports Journalist and UNICEF? What am I going to do?

But once they explained what they wanted to achieve, we made a few trips into the hinterlands. There, I understood. UNICEF does amazing work but they wanted bold, and unconventional voices to tell the stories of pain and need and suffering and joy and happiness they encounter all the time.

If you look at the kind of people they chose – the influencers – we seem to have something in common. M.anifest and myself…

 

OA: And Wiyaala.

GAS: Yes. Look at the personalities.

M.anifest. No, he doesn’t like to fit in. Wiyaala, don’t even go there! [laughs]

Seriously though the data shows that in Ghana, over the last few years, our adolescent and growing population are facing several critical issues including obesity, poor eating habits, and a lack of exercise. For young girls, increasing menstrual hygiene issues, complications, sanitation, and so on. Taken individually, all these are separate but taken collectively, they are all interlinked.

As a sports journalist, these are things I see and report on daily because young people nationwide are seeing their playing spaces taken away from them. The fact that our cities are being gentrified, buildings are springing up everywhere playgrounds used to be – in Accra, in Kumasi, in Takoradi and all our big cities are turning into concrete jungles – means that one of the most immediate demographics who will suffer are kids. When you cut the recreational areas, what you do is that you force kids and their parents to be indoors, play video games and not exercise.

At those ages, kids have the energy to expend. They turn now to overeating, bad eating habits, and then obesity sets in, their bodies become amenable to disease. For girls, it leads to inevitable menstrual cramps and all the related problems.

My role as a sports journalist with the UNICEF team initially was to advocate for more playing spaces, especially for girls. Boys don’t face the brunt of these things as much as girls because society itself is wired against girls. Even where there are playgrounds, girls are asked not to play.

Along the way, my role morphed into championing other campaigns which are not so obviously linked. Stuff like open defecation, which is a huge problem.

In short, if I do not advocate for these things, there will come a time when Ghana’s best sporting talent has been lost to all these distant factors. When that time comes, what, and who will I have to report on when the best talents are gone?

And the more I have travelled with UNICEF into the belly of the country, the more I have realized that sports journalism as we practice it is maybe a waste of time. Some of the issues that are out there to be answered are life and death. Yes, sport is important, but some of the issues of health, sanitation, and stuff, eat into the very core of our being.

My biggest takeaway from working with UNICEF is that the more Ghana is advancing, the less holistically educated sportsmen and women we produce. The reason is simple: class sizes are growing bigger, teachers are fewer, and the country is just content to churn out graduates in quantity, but not quality.

If we don’t have an informed and educated citizenry, one that is clean, sanitized, gives equal opportunities to women and girls in sports, we are not advancing. This is why I take my work as a UNICEF influencing ambassador seriously.

OA: Some of the pictures you share are super humbling. Comparing life in Accra or any of the big cities in Ghana to say the regions of the north shows the privilege and wide gap in living conditions.

GAS: Yes. And that is why when I get into my journalism mode, I really don’t have the patience to coddle decision-makers.  Many of us are by just being born or educated in the cities, privileged. Almost all my work for UNICEF has been in the north of Ghana and you come to the south and you see us journalists handling politicians with kid’s gloves. And you realize: what are we doing?

I met a boy at one of the UNICEF functions at the Tamale campus of the University of Development Studies. He happened to be deaf and hard of hearing. This was in May. We resorted to communicating on pieces of paper and he told to me that his school team needed kits for playing.

I came back down, organized it, and just before I went for the Africa Cup in Egypt, I went back up north, to Savelugu, to give the team the items. I have adopted the Savelugu School for the Deaf. I have done that because I think it will keep me grounded so that I never forget why I am doing this job.

It is easy for me to sit on TV, come out of my studio, get a few praises, and be swollen-headed but the more I get involved with UNICEF, the more I remind myself that I am nobody, that I am privileged and I am in this job not for myself but for people.

This job, journalism is not about us. If you have to do this work and people are not your focus, you are in the wrong profession. This is a quote I am picking from my fellow controversial colleague, Manasseh Azure, ‘immediately the politicians become your friends, you have lost it.’ By all means, be nice to them but when it comes to the job, the people come first. And that is it.

Make no apologies. And that is why I keep saying, I don’t make any apology for being ambitious in this job because my ambition is to have a bigger voice that would let me speak better and on behalf of the people I serve. The people who pay my salary are people I also serve because ultimately it is a commercial space but we have to balance the content with the profit, because the people we serve are out there, and we have to speak for them.

When I return from these UNICEF trips, I am always reminded that I can drive in a car, meanwhile, UNICEF staff are riding bicycles to the communities they serve. My wife will attest to this, anytime I come back from these UNICEF trips, I am feeling low, down, and drained from the things I have witnessed.

I immerse myself and tell as many stories as possible, but it is always emotionally taxing and draining.

OA: Between advocating for social change, and sports journalism, which would you want to be remembered more for?

GAS: If I want to be remembered for anything, I think it’s that I was an advocate for the people who couldn’t sit on the platforms I am on. It is possible to be both. Some footballers are known for their football as they are known for their powerful advocacy: Kevin-Prince Boateng and racism. [The American soccer star] Megan Rapinoe and women’s rights; that sort of thing.

So I am a sports journalist but beyond giving you the scores and stuff which I have to do because of my commercial obligations, I want to do much advocacy as possible because ultimately that is what people would remember you for. 

Note: The interview was conducted in 2019, and published in 2020 by On Air Magazine.  Photography by Frozzen Second Studios.