The Media Foundation of West Africa has charged government to take immediate steps to prevent Ghana from losing its status as a nation that upholds freedom of speech and a free press.
The Foundation says the country is rapidly slipping from being a “glorious free press country.”
This call follows an assault on a Daily Graphic journalist by the brother of the Black Stars’ captain, Asamoah Gyan.
A driver with the multimedia group was also arrested on the orders of the Chief Executive of the Accra Metropolitans Assembly (AMA) after a failed attempt to arrest the journalists the driver was with.
The Mayor reportedly said the journalists who were attempting to film a demolition exercise were working to make government look bad.
Sulemana Brimah of the MFWA on Eyewitness News said: “In the course of this year, Ghana has recorded the highest number of press freedom violations if you look at the West African context.”
[contextly_sidebar id=”shLgyWJVjjjbzuSCHaXG4mt9el8Q8ox3″]He mentioned that Ghana over the past two years has had “so many of these incidents happening, radio stations being vandalized like what happened up north in Tamale, another incident happened in Wa, another happened in Dormaa Ahenkoro.”
“All of these are criminal cases that you would expect that the Police would act but in many ways, sometimes they are the perpetrators themselves,” he added.
Brimah was of the view that the state under normal circumstances should be taking up such matters for prosecution but it has failed to do so.
He explained that in almost all the global press freedom ranking that is done annually, Ghana, over the last three years has always been at the border line.
“In most of these indicators, if you score more than 30, then you are partly free, more than 60, then you are in the not free category. “Over the last three years, Ghana has always been on 29, 29, 29, so we are really at the border line in crossing,” he said.
He admonished the government to take immediate steps to resolve the issue otherwise; the nation’s next press freedom ranking will be affected.
By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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