The Managing Editor of The Insight newspaper, Mr. Kwesi Pratt Jnr., has cited the Rawlings regime for its poor record of freedom of expression and persecution of journalists but said press freedom is a struggle that ought to be sustained in good times and in bad times. Pratt Jnr. also warned that, depending on the issues at stake, any government can be intolerable to the limits of suppressing press freedom and openly persecuting journalists. Pratt was delivering a speech on the state of the media organised by the Media Commission in partnership with the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, a German non-governmental organisation that supports good governance programmes in Africa. Mr. Pratt Jnr., in making his submission, noted that it is strange that the same Head of State, Flt. Lt. Rawlings, who dismantled the law against press freedom when he was Chairman of the erstwhile Armed Forces Revolutionary Council that ruled the nation from June 1979 happened to be the same Head of State that put in place laws against press freedom when he became Head of State, after overthrowing the Limann administration and setting up his Provisional National Defence Council. "When it comes to sensitive issues like press freedom, I believe a huge responsibility lies on the journalist himself to fight his own cause, because it is strange, for example, that the leader of the nation, who removed the laws that impinge on press freedom in 1979 reintroduced those same laws when he became Head of State again in December 1981". He advised journalists not to depend on any act of benevolence from ruling governments to cushion them against any hazards in their profession, as that makes it difficult for them to fight those who will put impediments in the way. Press freedom and journalists, Pratt Jnr. added, have suffered persecution since the days of Nkrumah through Professor Busia and the military dictatorships till the Rawlings PNDC regime and even now, citing controversial cases including one that involved a mechanic at the Suame magazine, who was detained by Police for some comments against President J.A. Kufuor, but who Pratt was reminded was released through the intervention of the then Interior Minister Hackman Owusu Agyemang. Continuing, he alleged that sometime ago, reporters were abused at the NDC Headquarters where they were covering a programme. His own reporter, he added, was beaten at the New Patriotic Party Headquarters at Kokomlemle where the reporter had gone to get an official react to a story. That is aside of a TV Africa reporter, who also suffered some form of assault for doing his lawful duties as a journalist, he said. The safer stance to adopt in fighting those who put obstacles in the way of press freedom, according to Mr. Pratt is for the media to be vigilant because as far as he is concerned, there will be no time that the struggle for media freedom will end. He, however, stated that in achieving a balanced environment, government and media practitioners require a fashioning of new definitions and setting of boundaries in the supreme interest of the people, in whose name governments hold power. Enhancing press freedom and expanding the frontiers of free expression, he also intimated, cannot be realised without a determined effort and commitment on the part of ruling political administrations to reduce the literacy rate to enable the majority of the population understand issues that affect them and their very economic, cultural and social existence, so that they can contribute to nation-building. Source: The Ghanaian Observer