Give Fair Coverage To All Parties, NMC Directs State-Owned-Media

The National Media Commission (NMC) has reminded the state-owned media to give fair and balanced coverage to all political parties during the 2016 election campaigns. It further urged the media to operate as an impartial and objective referee which had the responsibility to ensure that the elections passed off peacefully. The Chairman of the NMC, Mr Kabral Blay-Amihere, gave the reminder at an orientation workshop organised by the NMC for boards of state-owned media organisations at Elmina in the Central Region last Friday. The three-day workshop discussed, among other topics, the role of the state-owned media under the 1992 Constitution; the corporate governance of the state-owned media; state-owned media and the fairness doctrine; empirical perspectives of the state-owned media. Referring to Chapter 12 of the 1992 Constitution, Mr Blay-Amihere said it insulated the state-owned media from governmental control and, therefore, urged them to serve the interest of the citizenry. �The state-owned media should not be perceived to be working for a particular political party but should serve as a referee that will bring peace and harmony to the country,� he stressed. He said the state media were not under any obligation to submit itself to governmental control but must work in collaboration with the government to ensure peace and harmony. Mr Blay-Amihere also spoke about the perceived division along political lines among journalists, saying: �If you go to some media houses you will see NDC and NPP camps, so let�s come up with strategies to deal with that.� On conditions of service for staff of the state media, he charged the boards to create better conditions for the staff of their organisations, saying: �Our staff constitute viable assets of our organisations.� For his part, the Executive Secretary of the NMC, Mr George Sarpong, said the commission had begun an exercise to monitor how the state media would cover next year�s elections. He warned that whatever the chief executives would do to undermine the Constitution would lead to their dismissal. He said the NMC would also demand accountability from the boards on their operations.