Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung@ 40 in Ghana By the time I was elected President of the GJA in 1993 the collaboration between the FES and GJA had reached appreciable heights which even reached higher levels with the then Resident Director Dr. Peter Mayer. Of major concern in those years immediately after the repeal of the Newspaper Licensing Law in 1991 and the advent of constitutional rule in 1992 which witnessed the mushrooming of many newspapers was the spate of ethical violations which threatened press freedom. With the support of the FES, the GJA embarked on months of discussion of ethical conduct among its members. The GJA as a professional association at that time did not have a code of ethics. A Committee headed by a veteran journalist, David Anaglate, then the Director of GBC Radio was charged with drawing up a draft code of ethics which was discussed and adopted at a congress in Sunyani in May 1994. The FES went further and sponsored the publication of the new code of ethics into pocket size books and posters which were freely distributed among members of the GJA. The passage of the Code of Ethics provided an easy reference and guide to journalists and has since then been in use. The Ethics Committee of the GJA and the Awards Committee of the GJA have used the 1994 Code of Ethics in their work. One other important dimension of the role of the GJA during the years of Peter Mayer as Resident Director of FES and Kabral Blay-Amihere as President of GJA was the institution of annual review conferences-STATE OF THE MEDIA CONFERENCES­which brought journalists and members of the public to critically review the performance of the media. Participants came from academia, the judiciary, the bar, the legislature and the executive as well as ordinary patrons of the media from the general public. The proceedings of the annual review conferences were published into books. In fact at a time when there were few books on the media, the FES helped by publishing proceedings of the various seminars into books to enrich the literary traditions of Ghana. The publication of the proceedings of a conference on 38