Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA ), has expressed worry \u00a0about the insatiable desire of politicians and their cronies to establish radio stations for the purposes of churning out propaganda, a situation he blames for the open\u00a0disregard for sanity on the airwaves.<\/p>\n
The Executive Director of MFWA, Sulemana Braimah, said this in response to a statement issued by Accra-based Montie FM, apologizing for some inflammatory comments made on the station by two radio panelists.<\/p>\n
The two panelists allegedly threatened to unleash mayhem on Supreme Court judges if\u00a0they made any judgment against the Electoral Commission in the ongoing court case challenging the validity of the voters\u2019 register.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”iIw1ufAjI4xnc6zKlwQP9hGqnAMdWdRt”]Speaking on Eyewitness News<\/strong>, Mr.\u00a0Sulemana Braimah, said although the apology which comes barely a day after the Supreme Court justices cited the station owners and the panelists for contempt, that was expected from the station owners at this point in time.<\/p>\n He however said it behooves the Supreme Court to decide on what to do the culprits going forward. Mr. Braimah, whose organisation, the MFWA, has been naming and shaming radio stations noted for indecent language, said although the lack of a proper regulatory framework is to blame for the situation, politicians opening stations for political propaganda are largely to blame for the situation.<\/p>\n According to him, some politicians mainly set up media houses with the sole aim of promoting their political agenda to the neglect of \u00a0professionalism and national interest.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have MPs who own radio stations, we have constituency chairmen, regional chairmen, regional organizers of political parties who own radio stations and all they want is for these radio stations to do the bidding of themselves as either candidates or for their political party and that will mean just forgetting about ethics, forgetting about professionalism and doing propaganda regardless of the consequences of such propaganda. They are simply not in radio for commercial purposes,” he said.<\/p>\n He lamented for instance how the Host of the Pampaso Show on Montie FM, Mugabe, and his panelists subjected his organisation to abuses simply because they were named in the monitoring of the airwaves as one of the offenders in the use of indecent language on radio.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n NCA must publish names of media owners<\/strong><\/p>\n Proffering solutions to the development, Mr. Braimah tasked the National Communications Authority (NCA), to disclose the names of the owners of all licensed radio stations in order to help the MFWA clamp down on media houses that are specifically set up to do the bidding of politicians.<\/p>\n \u201cThe NCA should put out the names of the persons to whom they issue radio frequencies to or the broadcast licenses to so when there are matters like these we know the right people to engage and the persons we must be speaking to in order to avert some of these unprofessional and very abusive practices that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By: Marian Ansah\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana
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