Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), Sulemana Braimah, has raised concerns about the partisan ownership of many media organisations in Ghana and its implications for media freedom. According to him, the ownership dynamics of media houses play a crucial role in the ongoing challenges faced by the press.
Speaking at JoyNews’ national dialogue on ‘Defending Media Freedom‘, he said, “We have a situation where our media organisations are owned by partisan folks. A lot of media houses are set up not for journalism but for the business of political propaganda for the business of driving the interest of owners.”
Mr Braimah stated that findings from a recent monitoring period between May 2020 and June 2021, during which the MFWA recorded approximately 2,710 incidents of ethical violations among media outlets, nearly 60% of the violations were associated with media organisations that were overtly partisan.
“Close to 60% occurred on media houses that were out rightly partisan. So the question of ownership is a big deal if we are talking about defending media freedom. It is something that as a nation, we have to look at.” He also noted the difficulty in defending journalists, particularly those who face backlash for their critical commentary.
He described situations where journalists make inflammatory remarks against the current government or the military, which can incite attacks or controversies.
“If you have somebody sit on the media and say that anyone who votes for the current government is a fool or is a goat and nothing happens, the person is still on the air. The person says our Armed Forces, the generals are weak so there should be a coup d’état. He is a beast. And then we say we want to defend this because we must defend media freedom.”
