News:
August 23, 2020
As the world celebrates World Press Freedom day, Member of Parliament for North Tongu Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa is calling on the nation to draw lessons from how disinformation is eroding democratic gains in other jurisdictions.
According to the Ranking member on Foreign Affairs Ghana should get ahead of the curve to formulate policy and legislative reforms that will seek to protect our relative nascent democracy.
“Mr. Speaker as we mark this day, we must take judicial notice of our decline in the 2019 world press freedom index where we dropped from the rank of 23 to 27 sadly and lost our status as African’s best ranked country”.
He added that Ghana has come too far as a country to have any threshold of tolerance whatsoever for reports such as the police brutalities meted out to the three Ghanaian Times Journalist, Raissa Sambou, Malik Sulleman and Abdul Salifu Rahman.
That of Latif Iddrisu of Joy news, Victor Kawukume and Timothy Gobah of Daily Guide, we must send a clear message to all that this nation will not countenance any abuse or attack whatsoever on journalists carrying out their legitimate duties.
Also there is a positive trend where journalist do not only tell the story and move on but take up the story as a cause and pursue it until there are clear tangible results, “I congratulate the Media Coalition Against Galamsey, the spirited effort to find the kidnapped girls from Tarkoradi, the camping to disband political vigilantism and the resilience of the Right to Information Coalition”.
This is a most refreshing and inspiring development that we must all encourage and indeed provide the necessary support as a legislative arm seeing that we are natural allies in our oversight mandate.
He further took the opportunity to celebrate Ghanaian Journalists who had made the country proud by winning awards like, Anas Aremeyaw Anas in January at Lausanne, Switzerland, Manasseh Azure Awuni winning journalist of the year 2018 of West Africa and Parliamentary correspondent of multimedia Joseph Opoku Gakpo, best video journalist, International Federation of Agriculture Journalists (IFAJ).
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/ghanamps.com