Broadcasting Bill before parliament soon

A Broadcasting Bill will soon be presented to parliament for consideration and passage. That is according to Information Minister, Fritz Baffour.

A statement signed by the Minister to commemorate World Press Freedom Day noted that the Broadcasting Bill aims at standardizing the country's broadcasting industry as well as increasing the level of professionalism in the industry.

The statement further noted that “as a further show of support for the press, the government is committed to ensuring that the one million Ghana cedi Media Development Fund allocated under this year's budget would be quickly disbursed in order to support the media by way of training and capacity building among others.”

“Already, a stakeholders forum has been held with practitioners on various issues including capacity-building requirements of media practitioners as well as accessibility and disbursement under the Fund” the statement added.

The statement renewed government's pledge to run an open, transparent and accountable government which will at all times “be ready and willing to be part of any professional media scrutiny aimed at deepening our constitutional democracy”.

It reminded all media practitioners that “Ghana is the only country that we have” and thus urged them to be ambassadors of peace by guarding against the use of hate speech, insults, inflammatory and abusive language, ethnicity and any conduct calculated to breach the peace.

The Minister congratulated media practitioners in the country for their various roles in the national development efforts and assured them of government's commitment to deepening press freedom as well as widening the space for practitioners to meaningfully engage in their journalistic activities.