A ‘culture of silence’ had prevailed in Ghana from 1981, from the time Jerry Rawlings seized power in a military coup for the second time. This was supposed to have ended early 1992 with the adoption of the new constitution (1992) preparatory to multi-party elections the following November. Rawlings and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) won the ensuing elections amid widespread allegations of vote-rigging by the leaders of the opposition parties, who complained of having been denied access to the state-owned Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) in the run-up to the elections.

In office, the Rawlings-led NDC government continued to maintain tight control of the airwaves. Notwithstanding the provisions of the 1992 Constitution, the government maintained hostility towards independent broadcasting. It blocked an attempt by a group of private businessmen to launch a commercial radio station.

Radio Eye began broadcasting in December, 1994 after the Frequency Control and Modulation Board refused to assign and register it a frequency. The authorities closed it down a fortnight later on the grounds that it had not been properly licensed. In addition, three of the station’s directors, Dr. Charles Wereko-Brobby, Tom Wereko-Brobby and Teddy Konu, as well as an employee, Felix Kojo Impraim, were dragged to court. The charges were subsequently dropped.  But only after the then Minister of Information, Kofi Totubi-Quakyi, accused them of acting like ‘modern day Tarzans [who] must be reminded that we are not living in a jungle where there are no laws’.

At the time of the incident, Totubi-Quakyi had announced in parliament that private stations would be licensed, but only in “a planned manner”. More than six months later, no progress had been made towards granting licenses. In the interim, the directors of Radio Eye had sued the police for damages for the “illegal interference with the exercise of our constitutional right to operate a radio station”, especially Article 162 (3) of the 1992 Constitution which states that, “there shall be no impediments to the establishment or operation of a newspaper, journal or other media for mass communication or information”.

Government control of the airwaves also extended to the print media through its ownership of the country’s only two national daily newspapers then, the Daily Graphic and The Ghanaian Times, both of which were heavily subsidized. All the independent newspapers, by contrast were either weeklies or bi-weeklies, which effectively meant that the government controlled all the day-to-day information originated within the country.

Even so, the government remained sensitive to reports in the private press which were construed in the negative light. In February that year, for instance, Tommy Thompson, the publisher of the Free Press, one of the most outspoken of the independent newspapers then, was charged to court along with the editor, Eben Quarcoo, and a columnist, Kwabena Mensah Bonsu, for an article which contradicted the attribution of a statement by the newly-appointed Chief Justice, I.K Abbas. The Supreme Court upheld the charge by a narrow majority and the columnist was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment.

On Friday 27 July 2001, Ghana's parliament unanimously repealed the Criminal Libel and Seditious Laws, which had been used to incarcerate a number of journalists in the past. The repeal of the Criminal Libel Law meant journalists were even freer to report on any issue that interests them subject to responsibility. The press in Ghana now operates with more freedom than anything that pertained under the culture of silence.

It saddens me that this relative freedom the press in Ghana now enjoys is being threatened by a law initiated by the body constitutionally mandated to promote and ensure the freedom and independence of the press, the National Media Commission (NMC).

The law in question, the Content Standards Regulation 2015 (LI 2224), passed by Parliament on December 9, 2015 allows the NMC to establish and maintain standards in the distribution of content of public electronic communication and broadcasting services. This law also empowers the NMC to grant content authorisation to an operator or revoke same, if an operator contravenes the regulations. It states further that failure to obtain permission to broadcast particular content attracts ‘a fine not less than five thousand units or a term of imprisonment of not less than two years and not more than five years or to both the fine and term of imprisonment.’

But what does the 1992 Constitution say about the freedom and independence of the press in Ghana?

Article 162(1) Freedom and independence of the media is hereby guaranteed.

(2) Subject to this constitution and any other law not inconsistent with this constitution, there shall be no censorship in Ghana.

(3) There shall be no impediments to the establishment of private press or media; and in particular, there shall be no law requiring any person or media; and in particular, there shall be no law requiring any person to obtain a license as a prerequisite to the establishment or operation of a newspaper, journal or media for mass communication or information.

(4) Editors and publishers or newspapers and other institutions of the mass media shall not be subject to control or interference by Government, nor shall they be penalized or harassed for their editorial opinions and views, or the content of their publications.

(5) All agencies of the mass media shall, at all times, be free to uphold the principles, provisions and objectives of this constitution and shall uphold the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people of Ghana.

(6)Any medium for the dissemination of information to the public which publishes a statement about or against any person shall be obliged to publish a rejoinder, if any, from the person in respect of whom the publication was made.

The constitution is also clear on the functions of the National Media Commission:

Article 167(a) to promote and ensure the freedom and independence of the media for mass communication or information;

(b) To take all appropriate measures to ensure the establishment and maintenance of the highest journalistic standards in the mass media, including the investigation, mediation and settlement of complaints made against or by the press or other mass media;

(c) To insulate the state-owned media from governmental control;

(d) To make regulations by constitutional instrument for the registration of newspapers and other publications, except that the regulations shall not provide for the exercise of any direction or control over the production of newspapers or other means of mass communication.

Independence of Journalists

Article 173. Subject to article 167 of this constitution, the National Media Commission shall not exercise any control or direction over the professional functions of a person engaged in the production of newspapers or other means of communication.

In the light of all the aforementioned provisions of the constitution, it is abundantly clear that the Content Standards Regulation 2015 (LI 2224), which seeks to empower the National Media Commission to sanitize the airwaves (radio and television) is unconstitutional, primitive and smacks of a calculated attempt to usurp the freedom and independence of the media guaranteed by the 1992 Constitution. Make no mistake, I am not against checking malicious and irresponsible reportage by the media but how come the body mandated to guard the independence and freedom of the press (the NMC) has now turned itself into a fox supposedly guarding the hen coop? 

According to the Chairman of the NMC, Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng, ‘content authorisation is just making the NMC aware of what the media operators are going to do on their shows. There’s nowhere in this LI that journalism is threatened. It is not a new standard. Content regulation is not new in broadcasting. All over the world, broadcasting is regulated in different ways’. This argument, I’m afraid, is feeble and does very little to assuage our fears.

I am extremely surprised at the appalling silence of the leadership of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) since news about this law came to the fore. As a body whose duty it is to ensure that the interests and rights of journalists are promoted and protected, it is shocking that till date not even a single press statement has been issued by its leadership in condemnation of this law which will eventually take us further back into the era of the culture of silence. So far, it is only the leadership of the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA) that has taken up the matter and is proceeding to the Supreme Court for interpretation.

But why such a dubious law at this time of our democratic dispensation as a country? My suspicion is that ‘the powers that be’ intend riding on the back of concerns expressed by some Ghanaians about the media, especially, the weaknesses in the regulatory framework for broadcasting in Ghana to control private media houses from performing their constitutionally mandated roles.

Some private media houses have consistently been critical of the government in recent past; demanding accountability from public officials and exposing the ills of our society. Late last year, investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas brought to the limelight some of the gaping holes in the justice delivery system in Ghana by exposing the biggest judicial scandal in Ghana yet.

Previously, his contemporary with the Multimedia Group, Manasseh Azure Awuni, had exposed several shady deals and contracts gone-bad under the ruling NDC government. The posturing of the ruling NDC government towards these probing reports by the media appears to be that of intimidation and disrespect.

In September 2015, a Presidential staffer, Stan Dogbe destroyed a voice recorder belonging to a reporter of the GBC who went to the 37 Military Hospital where presidential correspondents had been hospitalized after an accident which killed a Ghanaian Times reporter. Surprisingly, the GBC did not do any story on the incident. Why? “If you talk to any GBC journalist, the first thing they tell you is that, ‘look we cannot speak, [if we do], we will be punished, management will not tolerate that,” said Sulley Braimah, President of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA).

The MFWA later presented a recorder to the GBC to replace the said reporter’s destroyed recorder and proceeded to petition the President to sanction Stan Dogbe but till date no action has been taken by the Presidency and Stan remains at post. Commenting on this development on Joy FM, Journalism professor, Audrey Gadzekpo said that in a serious democracy, Stan Dogbe would have been sacked immediately. This goes to show that all these attempts by the NMC to regulate content in the name of upholding ‘minimum standards’ is a sham and a mere clandestine attempt to gag the media from speaking truth to power.

A free and vibrant media is very critical to the survival and progress of any nation. Therefore all well-meaning Ghanaians owe it a duty to themselves and our dear country to rise up, sustain pressure and resist these attempts by the NMC and its collaborators to curtail the freedom of the press in Ghana and by extension freedom of speech.

“Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control; they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit – in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.”
”• Chinua Achebe, ‘Anthills of the Savannah’

 

References:

1. International Federation of Journalists Directory of African Media edited by Adewale Maja-Pearce, p. 121, 122,123
2. 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, Chapter 12
3. ‘GIBA accuses NMC of bringing back criminal libel law’, www.graphiconline.com,  January 5, 2016