POLITICIANS LIKE ANY OTHER CITIZEN CAN OWN A BROADCAST STATION -DR. MAWUGBE

The Executive Director of the Centre for African Elections Media Monitoring Index (CAEMMI), Dr. Messan Mawugbe has indicated that preventing politicians from owning license to operate media houses in Ghana would not be the ideal way to ensure decency and ethical conformity to journalism ethics in the country's media landscape.

Speaking in an interview on Kapital Radio midday news on Monday in Kumasi, he said, “Exempting politicians from owning a broadcasting station will be a form of gagging the citizens”.

He added that, such a move would be difficult since we have to set guidelines and clearly define who a politician is to be able to enforce such a regulation.

''What needs to be done is to strengthen the media standards and guidelines that govern the ethics and the journalism profession as enjoined in chapter 12, article 162(3) of the 1992 constitution that ''there shall be no impediment to the establishment of private press or media…'', he emphasized.

He was also of the view that strong media content monitoring and evaluation mechanism that will benchmark the compliance level as against the non-compliance, could also help in maintaining media sanity.

He urged all to be mindful of their utterances as certain utterances will mar our democracy.

CAEMMI is a Non-Profit and Independent International organization, committed to promoting Democracy and Governance processes in Africa by engaging Elections Media Monitoring Intelligence Tools (EMMIT) in Media Research.

SIGNED
Messan Mawugbe (Ph.D)
Executive Director
From CAEMMI Media Relations Desk