Arthur Kennedy Writes: Reflections On World Press Freedom Day

We just had another World Press Freedom Day.
It is stunning how time and circumstance change one's perception of the media and its place in society.

Thomas Jefferson once asserted that the press without government was preferable to government without the Press. Some years later, chastened by experience and a little angry, he fumed that "nothing can be believed which is seen in a newspaper !".

It would seem that he was then, the Donald Trump of his era.

In establishing the World Press Freedom Day, the UN hoped it would serve as a "reminder to governments of the need to respect their commitment to Press freedom ". Consistent with this spirit, the UN Secretary General just thanked journalists for "speaking truth to power". He went on to state that "reporters regularly bring to light major cases of corruption and nepotism, human rights violations, ethnic cleansing and gender-based violence. These reports are crucial in the pursuit of justice, laying the foundation for more detailed investigations that may lead to prosecutions."

Echoing the theme of this year's celebration, "Journalism without fear or favour", the President of the Ghana Journalist Association , Dr. Affail Monney, has lauded the role of courage in the practice of journalism. Indeed, there is underway a futile debate about the Press freedom rating of this governor versus its predecessor.

When the UN set up the World Press Freedom Day as a reminder to governments to respect press freedom, they left a lot unsaid.

And in the enthusiasm of youth, I like many, believed that governments were the only evil to be feared by advocates of press freedom.

Governments do not always use force or its threat to coerce or bully the press into silence.Often, instead of BULLYING the press, governments BUY the press!

Governments buy, not just the silence of the Press but more often, its false support, for bad policies, corruption and nepotism.

These lead to silence of the Press in the face of evil or the support of evil by the press. Examples of these are the silence of the New York Times on the holocaust and the support of Radio for the Rwandan massacre! And the silence of the Ghanaian media on the continued imprisonment of Gregory Afoko in flagrant violation of his rights and our constitution.

To be fair, governments are not the only powers that seeks to obtain the silence of the media or its unprincipled support for bad things-- wealthy organizations/institutions, ideologies, religious sects, powerful chiefs etc do too and are very successful in attaining these ends.

The media-'even respected media bury stories or knowingly publish false stories all the time.

Last year, the venerated New York Times published a story about US Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh exposing himself to a female student while at Yale. It turned out that the lady at the centre and all seven witnesses could NOT recall the incident. And yet the Times, reputed to be perhaps the best newspaper in the world published the story while omitting the lack of corroboration.

The New York Times later called that "an editorial mistake"!

Ghana too had had its share of media silence or misreporting.

To appreciate this, one needs only to recall two incidents.

First, despite the saliency of corruption in our governance , it required a foreign journalist to pointedly pierce the vapid generizations and ask President Mahama some pointed, personal questions on the subject, including the obvious, "Have you ever been offered a bribe?"

The same thing happened with Free SHS. Despite his passionate advocacy of the program for years, it took a foreign journalist to expose the then candidate Akufo-Addo's tenous grasp of the costs of the program.

Why did the nation that had produced journalists like P.A.V. Ansah, Tommy Thompson, Kweku Sakyi Addo and Elizabeth Ohene, as well as Newspapers like the Pioneer , Legon Observer and Free Press need foreign journalists to expose these truths in our body politic?

Where are those stand on the shoulders of these giants?

The democratization of access to the airways have made the media more and not less important. Presidents and potentates, as well as snake oil salesmen, are taking to the airways to give unverified information in unprecedented amounts.

This need for credible, bold and honest journalists has been accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whether it is Donald Trump promoting new cures or Kojo Oppong Nkrumah trying to explain the nuances of public health, there is a need for objective truth-tellers.

And none of these are more important than well-trained journalists, beholden to none but the truth in the service of mankind.

May God protect journalists and all of us--- from lies, from bullying by governments or thugs, from those who will buy our consciences, from journalists who would mislead us for ideological or pecuniary reasons and from COVID-19.

Happy World Press Freedom Day.
Arthur Kobina Kennedy (5th May, 2020)