Let’s get to My Take this morning - VERIFY THE BADGE - AND VERIFY THE STORY, but a word of caution about something far more important than anything I will say about myself.

We have been discussing arrests, particularly by people who may not immediately be identifiable as law-enforcement officers.

Please, be careful.

If people in plain clothes approach you claiming they have come to arrest you, ask for proper identification. Ask which institution they represent, why you are being arrested and where they intend to take you.

Where there is genuine doubt about their identity, ask to report with them to the nearest police station or other law-enforcement office. Alert family or trusted persons. Have someone accompany you where practicable. Call your lawyer.

Do not physically obstruct genuine officers effecting a lawful arrest. But being law-abiding does not mean blindly surrendering yourself to unidentified people simply because they claim the power to arrest you. Check Article 14 of the Constitution and Section 10 of the Criminal Procedure Act 30. It details your rights and what is unlawful arrest which you may lawfully resist.   

A lawful arrest by genuine law-enforcement officers ought to be distinguishable from an abduction.

Now, I have received good feedback from respected people, including at the seat of government. They tell me many in the Newsfile audience believe I should not descend into the gutter with a man whose stock-in-trade is insults and manufactured stories.

You are right and may or may not want me to do what I am about to do because you are not the class of audience to waste your precious time to gossip about people and their looks, their health, or their family being treated to insults. But you deserve answers to false allegations about me – the issues.

I also have enormous respect for President John Dramani Mahama, who himself has publicly denounced the ugly subculture of insults and abuse that is increasingly poisoning our online public discourse.

And the irony is not lost on me.

I have spent practically the whole of this week at a residential workshop training several dozens of media hosts, editors and managers in media law - accuracy, verification, ethics, defamation and responsible journalism.

I should therefore be the last person to leave that classroom and come here to practice the very conduct I have been teaching journalists to avoid.

So, I won't.

But silence should also not become evidence manufactured in support of a lie.

So, for the last time, let me put a few things on record about Kevin Taylor.

I hardly mention his name. Many respectable people I know don't either. Because they do not wish to participate in a social media culture where notoriety is gained through personal abuse and false allegations.

For about a decade, he has repeated a juvenile story about my breath.

Even if I suffered from halitosis, I am still struggling to discover its relevance to any matter of public interest on which I have spoken.

But that is the least of my concern.

He has manufactured stories about my family, my professional life and my supposed political connections.

They are not differences of opinion.

They are false.

He has invented stories about the life my wife and I supposedly lived in Kumasi or later Accra.

And even if I came from the poorest home in Ghana, what exactly would be the shame in that?

I remain profoundly grateful for the modest successes God has blessed my family and me with through decent, honest work.

There is no dishonour in humble beginnings.

Then came his confident announcement that President Akufo-Addo had pencilled me down for appointment to the Bench.

He told his followers to watch it happen.

Well, they watched.

It didn't happen.

Did he retract the story? Did his followers demand the evidence on which he made it?

No.

The story has simply changed.

Now he tells them that Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has promised me a place on the Bench if he wins the next election.

How convenient.

When one prophecy fails, simply move its fulfilment into the future.

I stated publicly many years ago that I had no interest in joining the Bench, or getting into partisan politics.

If I ever change my mind, I believe I am eminently qualified to seek judicial office through the proper processes. I would not require a politician to procure it for me.

But the more important question is simple.

Where is the evidence?

When did Bawumia make this promise?

Where?

Through whom?

What is the source?

His followers apparently demand none.

An allegation is made; it is swallowed. When events expose it, another version takes its place.

Then there is Agyapa.

He confidently announced that I was a lawyer in the infamous Agyapa transaction.

Again, completely false.

Not one engagement letter. Not one legal opinion. Not one invoice. Not one meeting record. Not one document showing I acted as lawyer for Agyapa.

Nothing.

Meanwhile, I moderated Newsfile discussions in which that transaction was subjected to sustained and sometimes severe criticism.

This is precisely why serious journalism insists upon verification.

If you say a lawyer acted in a transaction, show the evidence.

If you say a President selected somebody for judicial appointment, prove it.

If you say another presidential candidate has promised him the same appointment, produce your basis.

A microphone does not convert gossip into fact.

A class of following does not convert fabrication into journalism.

And repeating a falsehood for 10 years does not eventually make it true.

There is a reason I have generally refused to engage.

I have a family whose dignity I respect. I have professional colleagues. I have clients who entrust serious matters to me and are entitled to expect judgment and restraint from their lawyer. I have younger lawyers and journalists who watch what I do. And I have spent two decades building platforms patronised by audiences who expect evidence, reason and responsible disagreement.

I owe all of them better than an insult-fest.

I will not do that.

But I have a word for my colleagues in the Ghanaian media.

We cannot condemn misinformation, defamation and abusive broadcasting when they come from mainstream radio, television and newspapers, but suddenly lose our voices because the person doing it online may turn his insults and fabrications on us.

That is how impunity grows.

I know decent statesmen and women across NDC and NPP who worry about the effect this kind of social media culture has on the young people who consume it.

Our concern should not be Kevin as an individual.

It should be the standard we are normalising.

What are we teaching the young people who consume this material when insults are rewarded with attention, allegations require no proof, and outright falsehoods can simply be repeated until they are accepted as fact?

That damage goes beyond any one individual who is being attacked. It is about the kind of public discourse we are cultivating and the generation we are training to participate in it.

And it is precisely the culture President Mahama has rightly cautioned against.

Criticise me.

Challenge my journalism.

Attack my legal reasoning.

Disagree with every opinion I express here.

Show me where I got a fact wrong, and I will correct it.

On Saturday, I made a mistake. I confused the late elder Kwasi Sainti Baffoe-Bonnie with Eugene Baffoe-Bonnie, who was convicted and jailed in connection with the controversial NCA cybersecurity surveillance equipment transaction. I promptly corrected the mistake on air.

But, true to form, he conveniently cut and circulated only the portion containing the error, and made a meal of it - misleading his followers and insulting me for supposedly pronouncing Eugene Baffoe-Bonnie dead prematurely.

I made an error and corrected it. That is what responsible journalism requires. Deliberately concealing the correction in order to preserve a false narrative about the error is something entirely different.

What I did, that was accountability.

But manufacturing stories about my wife, my family, my career and my professional work is not accountability.

It is not journalism.

And discerning people can judge each of us by the record we leave behind.

I began this morning with a simple message about people claiming the authority of the State:

Verify the badge.

I end with an equally simple message about those of us claiming the authority of the media:

Verify the story.

Ask for the evidence.

Demand the proof.

And that, is my take.

SAMSON LARDY ANYENINI

September 26, 2026