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Executive Director of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Kenneth Ashigbey
The executive director of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Kenneth Ashigbey, says that claiming that irresponsible journalism is the reason for attacks and threats from journalists is wrong.
Speaking on The Pulse on Joy News, he stated that journalists’ responsibility and safety are not two sides of the same coin and is a justification for anyone to threaten or attack journalists.
“I have a problem with this theory… I’m not quite sure how many politicians have been hit because they made the wrong decision. I’m not really sure how many doctors have been hit because a surgery went wrong. “
“I’m not really sure how many lawyers have been attacked because they lost cases. When we began to discuss the safety of journalists and we began to hear the issue of responsibility as the justification for why journalists should be attacked ”.
He explained that journalists who have received death threats after the elections, the mutilated and others who have been victims of electoral violence were doing their duty.
The former managing director of the Graphic Communications Group said that since he worked in the media, the election and projection have been part of the process.
“This has happened because people don’t like what is being reported. We have seen many attacks on the media and it has not been due to the irresponsibility of the media, ”he added.
Ashigbey said he believes that making excuses to explain why journalists are being threatened in the country only incentivizes the perpetrators to attack.
His comments come after the Deputy Minister of Information, Pius Hadzide, attributed the attacks and threats to journalists to the lack of professionalism of some journalists in the country.
He affirmed that some journalists have not practiced responsible journalism and this has led to an increase in threats and attacks against them.
“I believe that the practice of mercenary and opinion journalism, where instead of reporting the facts, journalists report their interpretation of the facts is the challenge”
However, Ashigbey said there is no evidence to prove the minister’s claim.
He said that many people who practice irresponsible journalism are linked to politicians and, at times, to stations owned by these leaders.
But they do not suffer the same fate as a journalist in the mainstream media, Ashigbey added.
He stated that irresponsible journalism is a problem and should be discussed separately.
Meanwhile, The Multimedia Group has submitted a petition to the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ghana Police Service to investigate a series of threats that some of its employees have received.
The journalists, namely Evans Mensah, Gifty Andoh Appiah, Winston Amoah and Phillip Osei Bonsu of Asempa FM have received threats following the announcement of the results by Election Commissioner Jean Mensa.
Furthermore, the Ghana Journalists Association issued a press release calling on the police to investigate the threats against the life of freelance journalist Manasseh Azure.
Azure revealed in Joy News’ Newsfile on Saturday that it had received death threats following an article it wrote about the country’s recent elections and their outcome.
The article entitled, ‘ERRORtoral’ Commission and Akufo-Addo Coup, ‘discussed the anomalies with the Techiman Sur parliamentary results and the non-participation of the people of the Santrokfi, Akpafu, Lolobi and Likpe (SALL) areas in the voting process.
