The media being the fourth estate of the governmental business is mandated to serve as watchdogs on government and ensure that government officials are accountable for their actions to the very people on whose sovereignty vested in them from which their wielded power emanates from. Some of the current crops of media practitioners have played this role to a sterling and impeccable level of admiration giving credibility to the fourth estate of the governmental business in the quest of nation-building devoid of partisan and biased interest geared at defaming or smearing the hard-earned reputation of government officials.
The phenomenon where some media practitioners have aligned with political ulterior motives has become a pervasive canker contemporarily in our media and has reached an alarming rate which has culminated in dwindling the sense of professionalism and objectivity in the dispensation of their oversight duties as the fourth estate.
Some of these media practitioners happen to be cronies working in the interest of their paymasters while neglecting the very essence of why the media exists. There’s nothing wrong if you have a leaning towards a particular political party that aligns with your beliefs and ideology however remember that you owe the good people of Ghana an objective and professionalism drove service of exercising an oversight role as a member of the media bringing government to an account of whatever they do with the power vested in them by the Ghanaian people.
Bear in mind that laws exist and one could be taken on for any false fabrication of information aimed at tarnishing or dragging the names of people into the mud in order to satisfy some political whimsical and capricious masters. In the past few days some media practitioners who may be deemed to be ardent followers of the socialism ideology and align with the opposition have been apprehended for false and defaming statements made without evidential basis.
Some may suggest that this is political witch-hunting and that the incumbent government is perpetuating a “culture of silence” but this is far from the truth. A careful rummage of the statements uttered and made by the said persons in the cases of apprehension that has ensued in these few days, one would realise that they have erred and spilled out damaging statements that do not even have any truthful basis and has to be met with the utmost contempt and chastisement. The fact that there is freedom of speech does not mean one can verbally abuse or spill lies about others and go scot-free without facing the provisions made by the laws of Ghana regarding defamation.
I believe the arrest of Bobie Ansah and other media practitioners such as Oheneba of Power FM has got nothing to do with their affiliation to the socialism fraternity on the other side of the political divide but their misconduct and utterances of peddling falsehood aimed at creating disaffection for the incumbent government and its officials in order to give a facelift to their deceptive political masters behind the scene.
As media practitioners, your actions go a long way to affect the status of credibility and trust that the Ghanaian people have in you in helping keep an eye on government and not being tools in the hands of a political paymaster. Let us tread cautiously in our utterances and give truth-based evidence to issues of national interest that may require the media’s mandated role to be exercised.
In as much as we may be sentimental about this, let us also not forget character assassination, defamation, and peddling of falsehood are punishable by law.
The writer, Vincent Ekow Assafuah is the Member of Parliament for Old Tafo.
