News:
July 16, 2023
The Rt. Hon. Speaker of Parliament, Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin on Tuesday, July 11, 2023 visited two media houses, RADIO XYZ and Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) in the Greater Accra Region.
The visit was to share and explain the purpose for celebrating thirty years of uninterrupted Parliamentary democracy under the fourth republic and also understand some operations of the media and their challenges.
Mr. Speaker touched on several issues hindering the work of media practitioners with respect to an existed legislations or laws and that, Parliament is considering to amend all those laws to give the media practitioners free space to operate.
He further explained that, there are four arms of government but not three as it’s been always said, and the media is the fourth arm which performs the greater task in terms of democracy and accountability to the citizenry.
And expressed worry about Ghana been placed at 62nd on annual press freedom index where in 2015, Ghana was at 22nd.
He touched on creation of some new committees in Parliament such as ‘Ways and Means Committee, Committee of Intelligence and others which will help strengthen the works of the four arms of government and also give the best to the citizenry in terms of democratic governance.
And added that, Parliament has revised its standing orders to allow the media to be present at all committee sittings except where the chairman want a particular sitting to be in-camera unlike previously where the media were disallowed to be present at committee meetings.
Ghanamps.com