Bringing Moral Clarity into Ghanaian Media

... whilst freedom still rings



By David Klutse, London



I have been reading with keen interest when the issue of the acting News Editor of Joy FM, Mr Ato Kwamena Dadzie, and the Ministry of Information came up. Joy FM claimed that GREDA withdrew their opposition to the STX deal as a result of death threats even though GREDA had said they did so because they were satisfied with the content of the deal after meeting with government officials.



Government then asked for a simple apology from Mr Dadzie and Joy FM which in my view was the decent and civilized action any responsible government could have taken. However Joy FM refused to render an apology and rather chose not to give the request from government the required prominence it deserved.

At this point one would have expected civil society groups such as the CDD, Media Commission, Ghana Journalist Association, pressure groups etc, to have impressed upon Joy FM to do the decent and noble thing, giving it the same and equal prominence as they did to the false story broadcast by them on this matter, given that such allegations do a lot of disservice to the government and the nation at large and could even deter investors from coming to invest in the country.

The deafening silence emanating from the general public was worrying, because embracing democracy and freedom of speech does not mean we should lose our moral compass, enthrone irresponsibility cloaked in freedom of speech at the expense of correct principles, values and morals as Ghanaians.

I was amazed when hell broke loose as the police decided to throw the Law books at Mr Dadzie and Joy FM based on a law that exists on our statute books. The CDD, Media Commission, GJA and Civil Society groups, jumped on their moral high horses in their droves demanding the immediate cessation of the actions instituted against Mr Dadzie and JOY FM.

Do these pseudo-organisations have any modicum of patriotism, principles, values and morals at all? If they do, the least they could have done was to condemn Mr Dadzie and Joy FM for peddling falsehood and their subsequent refusal to render an unqualified apology to the government in their respective statements and also throwing the ethics of journalism into the gutter.

Instead, the CDD called for the repeal of the very law being used by the state against Dadzie and Joy FM. Should we be legislating based on morals or irresponsibility? According to the CDD, the government’s denial of the story should have settled the matter without an apology from Mr Dadzie and Joy FM. Do these clever clogs really know what false perception could do to the popularity of the government both at home and abroad or are they just being mischievous? The perception that this negative story had put out there in the minds of the populate could only be shifted by Mr Dadzie and Joy FM by simply coming out to tell the whole nation that they lied or by the government seeking redress at the court to clear its name. It does not matter how antiquated the said law is as long as it remains on our statute books, the government has every right to use it.

What will happen if we repeal all the laws that have been designed by the framers to demand responsibility of our journalists? If we continue down this road, we will end up in a situation where the “tail will very soon be wagging the dog”.

If Ghanaians will for once subordinate their feelings, selfish and political interest to rational thinking, correct principles, values and morality; the basic paradigms from which our natural attitude and behaviours flow, we would all inevitably come to the conclusion that, people should be made to pay for their own actions rather than absolving them of the consequences of their irresponsible behaviours.

In the words of the old architectural maxim “form follows function”. Likewise, freedom follows responsibility.



Source: David Klutse, London

E-mail: [email protected]