Emma On The Ball

With her pretty face, dimpled cheeks, sweet smile and eloquent delivery of news on TV, who would think that TV3's Emma Morrison is not approachable? Well, some people do and it bothers her.

“People think I am not approachable but I am very down-to-earth and open”, she told Showbiz last week at her Adesa We office.

“Sometimes I hear things said about me that suggest that I am unapproachable. It upsets me when people say what they don't know”.

Perhaps it is the seriousness with which Emma approaches her work as the General Manager for News and Sports at TV3 that places her in that unfortunate light.

As the General Manager for News and Sports, Emma runs the news department administrative-wise and has managers working under her whom she supervises. “I was made General Manager for News in May this year and Sports was added only a couple of weeks ago.”

To say Emma loves her job will be stating the obvious and as she herself puts it, “I really do, I can't imagine doing anything else but I also think I am not doing enough especially where environmental issues are concerned.”

Undoubtedly, Emma has paid her dues to get to her current position. She started working with TV3 since the station's inception in 1997 as a reporter/newscaster so she has obviously risen through the ranks to be in the seat she finds herself now.

Regular viewers of TV3 would have noticed that Emma never pronounces her first name in full. She just says “M Morrison” and explains, “there are too many Ms in my name so I decided to simply use “M Morrison”, how else would people remember me?” she said with a giggle.

Emma has covered so many stories on a myriad of issues that she can hardly remember which ones are most memorable, “I have done so much that there are times people remind me of some of the stuff I did and I go like, yeah!”

What she enjoys most as a broadcast journalist is when she is on international assignments, “I enjoy reporting from the sub-region so much, when going, I have no idea what is going to happen or what to expect and you know anything can happen on such trips and that makes it so exciting being out there in a different country with all the similarities and differences which one finds in both the Anglophone and Francophone countries.”

Perhaps it is her love for Africa and her belief that whatever happens around the world has an effect on the continent that inspired Emma to come up with the programme, Global Africa which she produced and hosted for a while before handing it over to her colleague Matilda Haynes recently.

A good number of people have observed that Emma is very eloquent and this she attributes to her very early reading habit, “I started reading a lot when I was young and thanks to the schools I attended, I was taught to and given the chance to express myself, I learnt to think and talk and that has come in handy for my profession.”

Emma started her education in the United Kingdom where she attended Dollis Junior High School and Childshill School both in North West London. She continued in Ghana at Goldfields Preparatory School, Wesley Girls' High School and Tarkwa Secondary School before entering the Ghana Institute of Journalism.

As a newscaster, Emma said she has a good relationship with all her colleagues but she was more often paired with Gideon Aryeequaye who she believes she flowed very well with.

“Although I was also paired with Israel Laryea and Nana Ama Ofori-Amankwah, Gideon and I did it together for so long that we grew into each other, as newscasters, our style of presentation and chemistry is always taken into consideration when pairing and I think Gideon and I just clicked when it comes to that.”

Emma, who told this reporter that she misses Gideon so much now that the latter has left TV3 said that the two of them did the news together for so long that people thought they were dating, “ I consider him a brother because he talks to me about anything and vice versa, people misconstrued that to mean we were dating but I must admit that I miss him a whole lot.”

So, is Emma dating? “Not really,” was all she would say.

How does she then deal with her male fans and especially those with the intention of dating her? Letting out another sweet smile, Emma said, “It's interesting but I handle it as it comes”.

“There are men who want to go out with me and I ask myself, what do they really want? I have younger ones calling and it makes me feel so old. Of course there are some who just want to meet and talk with me and they walk in here to do just that while others phone to talk, one has to be careful about the kind of men to date because you need to ask yourself if it is for real or if it is just because you are on TV.”

Talking of men, Emma told Showbiz how some rumours that make rounds about her really gets to her, “I hear very terrible rumours about myself, initially they didn't upset me but some of the rumours are very vicious,” she said.

“It is always being rumoured that I am dating one government official, minister or another. Imagine friends calling me at times to find out my whereabouts because someone said I had been seen in a hotel with a government official when I am actually at home at that time,” said Emma who obviously did not find these rumours funny at all.

Asked which famous personality she would love to have dinner with when given the opportunity, “I would love to dine with Queen Raina of Jordan, I believe she has a great sense of style and she fascinates me because she is doing a lot not just in her country but around the world and it just fascinates me how she manages to do all that and combines it with her duties as a Queen.”

For her role model she said, “I think you can have so many role models, all sorts of people get me motivated, people who achieve great things that is why I think I should be doing more than I am doing.”

Emma said when it comes to food, her favourite is rice and palm-nut soup, “I like a lot of pepper so I eat very hot pepper. I also like banku and fantse-fantse.” Green and purple are her best colours and she says it is because they are strong colours, “lately I have grown to like red, I guess I love hot colours.”

The June 5 born is the third child of her mum and the seventh of her dad who has 13 children made up of 11 girls and two boys. Her parents are the late Jacob Herbert Morrison who passed away in 2001 and Victoria Morrison, resident in Tarkwa.

Emma would not say much to her fans except to simply say, “Just be true to yourself.”

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