A professor of Communication Studies at the School of Information and Communication Studies at the University of Ghana, Prof Audrey Gadzekpo, says the public can help the media in its role as the fourth estate of the realm by consistently encouraging it to set better standards.

She believes the media’s credibility will improve when stakeholders assist them to fact-check and verify news in this era of social media and digitalization.

Speaking as part of the panel on the Joy Change Speaker series today, May 11, Prof Gadzekpo urged the traditional media to position itself as authenticators of true news from fake ones.

“I like to think of our traditional media as a place where if I hear something on social media I will go and verify. So it is important that the traditional media keeps their quality control role.

“It is important that we remind journalists of their ethical standards and guidelines… GJA has guidelines, NMC has guidelines… so that the media can set a standard, act as better gate keepers, act as vehicles through which peace dialogue messages can be amplified and finally telling the truth,” she said.

The Chairperson of the Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) noted that if the credibility of the media is not established, external forces will work to ensure that some of the powers of the media are curbed, a situation she describes as dangerous.

“The EU for example and CODEO in their last report noted that there was still a lack of enforcement of media journalistic standards.

"Now we seem not to be able to have the kind of media regulation framework that will respect the freedom of the media and at the same time be able to encourage better standards, and if that continues we will see greater danger of outside forces supported by citizens saying this is too much, 'let us curb some of the media’s powers' and that is dangerous.

"And of course, they will curb it through the kind of legislatures that we don’t want to see,” she added.