Some Journalists in the Ashanti region who recently took part in a US Embassy sponsored training workshop on election reporting organized by the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) have described a comment by the Chairman of the National Media Commission, Yaw Boadu Ayeboafo as anti-media. They are therefore calling for his immediate resignation from office in his own interest.
“How can a Chairman of an Institution which is supposed to promote Press freedom turn against his own people. It means he is not fit for purpose,” stated, Michael Asumani, a senior Journalist working in the region.
Other journalists were of the view that Ayeboafo’s “loose talks” have become one too many and that it appears he is fed up with the work that has been entrusted into his hands, hence, he should quietly leave the position if he cannot do anything better to champion the cause of journalists in Ghana.
“Since Ayeboafo became Chairman of the national media commission few years ago, it has been one lose talk to the other. He will talk plenty with big English but will take no action. Ayeboafo must respect himself and stop the useless talks, or quit. We journalists are not happy with him,” another stated.
The GJA in partnership with the Private Newspapers and Online News Publishers Association of Ghana (PRINPAG), the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA) and the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) recently directed all media houses in the country to put a media blackout on the Member of Parliament (MP) for Awutu Senya and Minister for Fisheries, Hawa Koomson and the MP for Yendi, Farouk Aliu Mahama for attacking or supervising attacks on journalists who were assigned to cover the last NPP Parliamentary primaries in their various constituencies.
Yaw Boadu Ayeboafo in a remark at the workshop on Friday described the GJA’s directive as “unproductive and dysfunctional”.
The NMC Chairman, who openly expressed worry over recent violent attacks on journalists in the country for exercising their primary duty, however, said the GJA cannot fight impunity with impunity.
“I still hold the position that while it is disheartening for journalists to be attacked violently, the unilateral resolve to blackout or boycott the MPs is not the most productive reaction,” Ayeboafo indicated.
President of the Ghana Journalist Association (GJA), Albert Kwabena Dwumfour, in reaction fired a salvo at the Chairman of the National Media Commission (NMC), Yaw Boadu Ayeboafo, over his recent comments which suggested that the directive by the GJA and its partners on the two prominent political figures was “populist and dysfunctional.”
The GJA president insists that the Association exhausted all relevant law institutions before switching on the media blackout directive.
“We see this situation, the media itself, as abnormal, and in abnormal situations, you don’t need dysfunctional or functional minds to treat abnormal situations. You deal with it abnormally, and that is the position of the GJA. I’m utterly shocked that no other person came here to use our platform to chastise us than the NMC Chair.
“He’s a senior journalist and a veteran, he didn’t take his time to even ascertain from us what informed the decision, he hasn’t communicated to us. And he just came here to say it’s just dysfunctional? He couldn’t give us functional ways to solve it, and he has run away,” Dwumfour stated.
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