The Deputy Minister of Information, Fatimatu Abubakar, has urged the public to desist from attacking journalists and to resort to other means of addressing concerns about media practice.
Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of a forum to mark the first anniversary of the current Ghana Journalist Association (GJA) administration, Ms Abubakar said more education needs to be done to curb attacks on journalists
“I look at the safety of journalists as the collective responsibility that all members of the Ghanaian society must be educated on. The issue is that when you look at the data of infringement that maybe the Media Foundation for West Africa and other stakeholders came out with, you can see that they vary from traditional communities to churches towards the football field and others and even security agencies.”
“So if we don’t sensitise the general public and look at the safety of journalists as more or less as a political problem, we will not get anywhere close to solving the problem we may not get anywhere close to resolving the problem. The most important thing has to do with education and letting the Ghanaian people know that if you don’t agree with somebody’s report it doesn’t mean you should threaten or go and harm the person. There are other avenues you can resort to in terms of seeking redress like reporting to the NMC or using other legitimate and legal processes to get have those issues resolved,” she stated.
Meanwhile, the GJA President, Albert Kwabena Dwumfour speaking on the theme “current threads in Ghana’s media landscape” said the association was collaborating with various stakeholders to combat attacks on press freedom.
