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Dr Affail Monney, President of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), has called on media practitioners to use their power and influence to mobilize Ghanaians to deal with development challenges for meaningful transformation. �First of all, journalists must deepen their understanding of what development means, interrogate, analyze and access the impact of development policies on the people, as well as move the paradigm of maniacal addiction to politics,� he said. Dr Monney made the call at the celebration of World Press Freedom Day, on the theme: �Development Journalism, Media Safety and Integrity," in Accra. He said the media should be committed more than ever to the concept of development which would make the present and future generations socially responsible, intellectually sound, technologically savvy, scientifically progressive, morally clean and spiritually pure. He said: �seriously, we cannot claim to be developing meaningfully when our gutters are choked with refuse, our environment is littered with garbage and our water bodies are polluted with galamseyers�. The GJA President said there is no doubt that journalism has made a fantastic impact on Ghanaians society in the past few decade, adding, the multiplication of newspapers and magazines, the proliferation of radio and TV stations, and the amazing inroads of the social media have all catapulted journalism to a high level of modernity. �It is common knowledge that in all democracies, media practitioners occupy the lower echelon of public popularity. This is relative to their job to blow the whistle on perceived or real acts of corruption, expose public dark spots, and hold people in positions of power and responsibility to account,� he said. He added, �but this does not give anyone the audacity or impunity to attack journalist in their line of duty. The scandalous frequency of such attack is dangerous, to say the least of these attacks are against our democracy, freedom of the media and the soul of the nation." Dr Monney noted that World Press Freedom Day should be a call to action halt the mistreatment of journalists and accord them the dignity and respect they deserve. �The GJA also cautions all journalists not to play into the hands of the enemies of the media by capitulating to unprofessional practices and unethical tendencies,� he added. He urged government to fast-track the accountability process to actualize the media development fund, saying the storm which characterized the disbursement of the first tranche of one million cedis should provide a fountain of lessons for all stakeholders to drink so as to insulate the remaining two million cedis from avoidable confusion and disagreement Mr Felix Kwakye Ofosu, Deputy Minister of Information and Media Relations, commended journalists who exposed wrong doing, corruption among other things on the part of government and other organization and encouraged them to continue with the good job. He said it is important for journalists to also highlight what people use government resources to do as to just to expose them. He called on the media to focus on the ordinary Ghanaian and development of the country than politicians, adding that most of the time, one could notice that what a politician may have said would be in front page in most of the newspapers leaving other issues which may be a benefit to the ordinary Ghanaian behind. The Deputy Minister added that the continuous publication of political stories do not reflect on the economy. He called on all the stakeholders of the media to bring their representatives to help manage the media fun, adding that the fun which was given to the media has not been misused. He congratulated all the media in the country and encouraged them to work hard for the betterment of the nation