Oppong-Nkrumah Begs the Question on Ghana’s Media-Freedom Ranking Drop

It is crystal clear that the latest methodology for ranking media freedom in Ghana by the Reporters Without Borders watchdog organization lacks credibility. So, rather than apologize for such scandalous flaw in the evaluation of the general treatment of media operatives by the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the Information Minister, a renowned broadcast journalist himself, namely, Mr. Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, had a bounden obligation to have meticulously and poignantly exposed these flaws, including Reporters Without Borders’ egregious and flagrant faulting of the Akufo-Addo Government for the fact that “one-third of media outlets [in Ghana] are owned by politicians or by people tied to the [two] topmost political parties.”

Now, how does this perfectly normative phenomenon get blamed on a government that acceded to the democratic reins of governance well after this situation or state of affairs had already been established? What did the Reporters Without Borders’ establishment expect the Information and Communications ministries of the current government to do? Clamp down on these largely privately owned media outlets or enterprises with highly politically connected proprietors and managers by promptly and summarily forcing them out of business? And just what criterion/criteria would then have been used to significantly enhance or upgrade Ghana’s ranking on the World Press-Freedom Index? Something is simply way out of whack with common sense here. Or was such indexing executed by personnel who were strung high up on narcotic drugs? (See “Ghana’s Press Freedom Dip Due to Change in Ranking Methodology – Oppong-Nkrumah” Modernghana.com 5/5/22).

Then also, the Information Minister does not help matters the least bit by curiously observing that this year, even countries like the Netherlands, Jamaica, Switzerland and New Zealand which have consistently ranked among the top-10 nations with the highest and most impressive levels of press freedom fell out of such top category or range. Now, short of the crass exhibition of inferiority complex and a bizarre admission of an abject lack of capacity for the practice of press freedom of the highest and most civilized caliber or order, what benefit, advantage, credit or consolation does such self-denigrating observation accrue to Ghana? That we ought to unreservedly accept mediocrity as our well-deserved lot on the World Press-Freedom Index? And just what makes the enviable protection and preservation of press freedom in countries like the Netherlands, Jamaica, Switzerland and New Zealand so rarefied and unattainable by Ghana or the Ghanaian citizenry? Is there something congenitally or genetically mishappen or defective with the Ghanaian personality and identity that makes a first-rate or a Category-A Media Status eternally unattainable?

At any rate, what set of factors or circumstances dictates that just because the aforementioned countries that routinely rank among the top-10 nations in the world on the Press-Freedom Index failed to make the cut this year, as it were, therefore automatically Ghana, which ranked a quite decent 30^th out of some 180 countries on the same index under the Akufo-Addo Administration just last year, must perforce be downgraded from the fairly decent ranking of 30^th to a horrific 60^th? Now, is it not conceivable or possible for the aforementioned countries to lose some of their media-freedom luster and thus be downgraded significantly, while Ghana equally significantly improved? This kind of morally regressive thinking does not serve any productive purpose besides poignantly highlighting the fact that as a people, we very well may be in dire need of psychological retooling.

And, if, indeed, as it is also strongly implied in the Global Media-Freedom Index’s ranking of Ghana by Reporters Without Borders, opposition political propaganda has been epically and massively effective and successful in putting an otherwise laudably performing Akufo-Addo Administration literally on the defensive, then there can be absolutely no gainsaying the fact that the key operatives of the New Patriotic Party, especially the Communications Team Members of the latter political establishment, have been sleeping on the job for far too inordinately long to be realistically expected to break the proverbial 8-year alternating tenure jinx that appears to have become the standard electoral fare between the now-ruling New Patriotic Party and the country's main opposition National Democratic Congress.

Of course, it has always been known that the operatives of the Rawlings-founded National Democratic Congress are light years ahead of their largely lethargic and AWOL counterparts of the New Patriotic Party. Yours truly ought to know this because he has written and published dozens of columns about the imperative need for the relatively far more progressive New Patriotic Party to bring its communications machine up to par with its relatively incomparable sterling administrative performance on the ground, as it were, but all to no avail. Consequently, on the latter count alone, it comes as a godsend for Reporters Without Borders to be telling the evidently tone-deaf leadership of the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia Administration what we have been telling the latter for more than a decade now.

You see, to convincingly carry the will of the people and, in effect, the sacred mandate of the Ghanaian citizenry in the 2024 General Election, in particular the 2024 Presidential Election, much more needs to be done than merely resorting to the soundbite scattershot propagation of the smashing or marvelous achievements of the New Patriotic Party. The party’s leadership needs to establish an elaborate communications network that appropriates every available information dissemination technology, from the most rudimentary and ancient to the most sophisticated and modern. The Bawimia-led New Patriotic Party needs to move quickly beyond digitized technology to establish a broad-based and broad-fronted dominance of Ghana’s political communication terrain or landscape.

What this means is that the leaders at the Kokomlemle Headquarters of the New Patriotic Party must be prepared to make some radical changes in its communications setup. They need to train young and talented party stalwarts who are capable of literally thinking on their feet. I sincerely do not see this direly needed ingredient presently, though I am well aware of the surfeit and surefire availability of the same. And, by the way, I absolutely and vehemently disagree with Reporters Without Borders that it is the bounden obligation of the Akufo-Addo Government to ensure that journalists in the private sector are gainfully employed or well paid. That role properly belongs to Parliament and the various media workers’ unions and associations. Of course, the jealous protection of reporters and journalists is the inextricable responsibility of the State. But this is only to the extent that our journalists and media operatives equally jealously live up to their end of the bargain responsibly.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

May 12, 2022

E-mail: okoampaahoofekwame@gmail.com

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