Press Freedom! What A 'blessing' For Ghana!

One may wonder why I put the word “blessing” in quotes, whilst obviously extolling the virtues of press freedom in the above headline.

First, though, let me congratulate the entire country on the award to it of Position #23 on the list of countries that enjoy freedom of the media.

Formerly, our position was #26. Now we've climbed above some countries which take it for granted that they've got freedom of the media, but which, when examined under the microscope of the very alert organisation called Reporters WithoutFrontiers, exhibit symptoms either of manipulation by "power", or enslavement by commercial considerations.

We discussed some of these difficulties faced by the media, at a symposium in Accra organised by the Ghana Journalists Association, in conjunction with the Ghana Association of Writers, on 26 April 2018. The symposium was poorly attended, due probably to the fact that it was held during office hours – we started at about 10.30 am., with some of the more punctual discussants having arrived at the venue more than an hour earlier.

I know that in Ghana, one does not bite the hand that feeds one, but it was galling to see the audience being numbed to partial slumber in the open air, because the air-conditioned auditorium of the aken by anther organisation (which had presumably paid for the privilege!) OK, the GJA has expenses that may not be fully covered by membership dues. But all the same...GJA had been t

It turned out to be a most interesting discussion, chaired by the Rev. Asante, chairman of the Ghana Peace Council. Nana Kwasi Gyang-Apenteng, the omnibus Chief 'High Executive' of Everything Pertaining to The Media In Ghana, was one of the speakers, as was Dr Affail-Morney, president of the GJA.

An unexpected but delightful speaker was Mr Zaya Zeebo, whom I had never met in Ghana but ran into in London. He was very frank about the attitude the Government of which he happened to be a member, the PNDC, adopted towards the media. “We thought everyone who had something to say that was not in favour of the PNDC was conspiring to overthrow us!” he confessed, amidst great, uneasy laughter.

For we remembered John Kegblenu and Tommy Thompson, whose lives were curtailed by imprisonment at the hands of the PNDC. Some of us also remembered the phenomenon of “shit-bombing” of media houses that came into disfavour.

Ad then, we blessed ourselves for having come into an era in which we are free, but (as pointed out by many speakers) we do not know what to do with our freedom. One speaker eloquently laid bare the stupidity of allowing – in the name of “freedom” – radio stations to terrorise individuals in the society -- especially celebrities -- with “prophecies” of death and other misfortunes. Is that what freedom of the airwaves is supposed to be used for? Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng said the National Media Commission was looking into this issue. We should all hold the Commission accountable for cleaning up the airwaves. Politics is another matter, but at least with “religious” terrorism, the issue is as clear as daylight.

Another speaker showed us, with graphs and figures, how we are marginalising certain regions with a lack of media coverage. He also demonstrated how absurd it was to find on radio discussions, so many "vernacular” speakers resorting to English and thereby “mix-mixing” local languages with English. A very witty discourse it was, illustrated with real quotes, too.

When it came to my turn, I sought to put the issue of media freedom in its global setting. Yes, we had seen very bad days in Ghana because of the suppression of the media. But how many people knew that the entire world could have been destroyed by thermonuclear warfare in 1962, as a result of the failure of the top executives on what is considered to be one of the greatest newspapers in the world, TheNew YorkTimes, to exercise their right to publish the truth without prior restraint?

In January 1961, an extraordinarily well-informed reporter of The New York Timescalled Tad Szulc, learnt from Cuban exiles in Miami, Florida, that a scarcely-noted report in the Nationnewspaper, that the US CIA was training mercenaries in Guatemala and Florida, to invade Castro's Cuba in April 1961, was true. The reporter was so concerned abut the intended flouting of the principle of non-aggression of one state against another that he flew to New York to brief his editors, rather than tell it to them on the telephone, which he was savvy enough to know could be monitored.

He was asked to write the story, and the NYT editorial team decided to put it on the front page, across four columns. But in a fit of self-censorship, the publisher decided to reduce the importance of the story by putting it into a single column in the middle of the front page. In other words, they had “guttered it” (put it in the “gutter”!)

As a result, the US was able to send the invasion force into Cuba in April 1961. But it was a disaster for the invasion forces, who were given a hell of a bloody nose by Fidel Castro's army and militias, and who were disappointed to find that the airborne forces and planes they thought the Americans had got ready to send to rescue them, in case of failure, had not materialised.

The funny thing about the episode was that when the invasion failed, President John Kennedy called the publisher of the New York Timesand other top executives to the White House, and berated them thus: “If you were going to publish the story of the Bay of Pigs invasion, you should have given it more prominence, because

that would have forced us to stop the invasion, and we wouldn't have had such a fiasco!”

Fiasco wasn't the only thing the botched invasion created, for Indeed, the invasion was what tempted Castro and the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, to try and send nuclear-warheads in missiles and install them in Cuba -- only 90 miles from the US MAINLAND! |The americas said, "Not on your life"and imposed a naval blockade on Cuba, which led to a most dangerous nose-to-nose confrontation between the US Navy and the USSR Navy, which could have caused the world to be destroyed in a thermonuclear war.

In other words, it is in the enlightened self-interest of “Power” for journalists do their job well.

I ended thus: “Look at my own case – being dismissed as editor of the DailyGraphic in 1970 for opposing Prime Minister Busia's attempt to engage in “dialogue” with the apartheid rulers in South Africa. If Dr Busia were alive in 1990 when Mandela was released, and had been snubbed by Mandela, if Busia had attempted to meet him (as everyone else did!) – wouldn't he have wished that someone had advised him not to engage in “dialogue”with the apartheid rulers whilst they unjustly kept Mandela in jail?

Someone did – and was fired! Can't life be funny?