President Mahama advocates for delayed broadcasting

President John Dramani Mahama has advocated for the introduction of delayed broadcasting to allow media to sanitize its content before airing it to an audience which is now globalised.

He was speaking at the Accra International Conference Center on Wednesday to mark 20years since the first private radio station Radio EYE broke the monopoly of state media in Ghana.

The president said he had mooted the idea of a "self imposed" media guidelines for delayed broadcasting while he was Communications Minister in 1998. It will block the airing of abusive langauage used by some callers and prevent commentary deemed defamatory from reaching the public.

The president believes these guidelines along with a broadcasting bill are some panaceas that can help deepen commitment to professionalism in the over  300 radio and 30 television stations in Ghana.

The president who is a media practitioner by training painted a gloomy picture about the dangerous practice of an unprofessional media.

He said personal reputations are damaged and Ghana's international image soiled when a journalist fails to check facts and ascertain information he chances upon.

Picking on a recent example, President used media report of a Ghanaian woman Nayele Ametefe who was arrested in the UK with cocaine after traveling from the Kotoka International Airport on an Austrian passport.

He said the initial picture of the woman used by some online websites was not that of the woman arrested. This, he said, damaged the reputation of an “innocent woman sitting in her corner somewhere".

According to President Mahama today's journalist must see himself as a global player whether he “likes it or not ….or chooses it or not”.

It is therefore important to be more diligent in his work.

"This is not your father's journalism" he pointed to the changing times of great internet power in disseminating information to any corner of the world.

The three-day conference ends on Friday and is being organised to take stock of progress in the media industry and prepare media practitioners of possible trends in the next 20 years. It enters it second day at the Kofi Annan Peace-Keeping Center in Accra - See more at: http://www.myjoyonline.com/news/2014/November-20th/if-you-dont-regulate-yourselves-govt-will-soon-regulate-you-karikari-warns-media-houses.php#sthash.xCY5hulB.dpuf Story by Ghana|Myjoyonline|Edwin Appiah|[email protected]