A blogger named Jeffrey Epprim Nyame, who in 2022 spread fake information that prompted fraudulent bank withdrawals, was given a 30-day jail term.
Prosecutors said publication compelled dollar account holders to withdraw their money from the various banks.
Prosecution led by Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Seth Frimpong earlier on narrated that the police gathered intelligence on social media, indicating that on 27 October 2022, Nyame published an article on his news portal called reportghana.net captioned, “Dollar account holders to get cedi at BoG rate for bank withdrawal effective 31 October?” and shared the same on various WhatsApp platforms, causing fear and panic among the general public.
Nyame was found guilty by an Accra Circuit Court presided over by Isaac Addo at the end of the trial on a charge of publication of false news.
Nyame begged the judge to pardon him, saying he had learnt from the experience and would never do it again.
Despite noting that the dissemination of misleading information was a serious concern in the era of social media, the court classified the offence as a misdemeanour.
It noted that there was the need to instill discipline and sanctity in the accurate reporting of news. Additionally, journalists were to be very cautious in their venture to break the news first.
Background
The prosecution said during investigations, it was established that Egyebeng initially created the news portal for Nyame called reportghana.com in the year 2019 which was used for the publication of similar articles but was closed down by Google for violating their community standard due to complaints received from users.
However, Egyabeng again created a similar new portal but this time changed the domain from “dot com” to “dotnet” and registered it as reportghana.net on 11 February 2022 to be able to use the same for publication of articles and happenings in Ghana.
The prosecution said Nyame admitted to publishing the alleged false news but stated that he got the article from mynewsgh.com but the investigations established otherwise and confirmed Nyame as the author and publisher.
The court heard that Egyebeng admitted to the creation of the news portal managed and used by Nyame.
The prosecution said further investigations uncovered the involvement of other persons involved in the publication who were at large.
Source:asaaseradio.com