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Mr Kwasi Gyan Appenteng, Chairman of the National Media Commission (NMC), has applauded the media in Ghana for its role to bring about peaceful and successful past elections, with a call on them to further prove their mettle by adhering to the highest professional ethics in the coming crucial elections.

Inaugurating a five member Ashanti Region Media Advisory Committee (MAC) at a ceremony in Kumasi on Thursday, he said journalists need to uphold fairness, factual accuracy, separating facts from comments in addition to playing its watchdog role to educate the electorate and ensure that the right processes are duly followed in the current politically polarized environment.

“Let’s try to state the facts as they are and not skew them in any way to stir confusion in a critical election in which the stakes are for winning across the political divide”, he said.

The committee is mandated among other things to monitor and manage the media space to isolate cases of good performances for commendation whiles also dealing with infractions.

Additionally, the committee would provide protection for journalists and ensure that they carried out their work in a safer environment, it would also offer an avenue for the filing of public complaints, all geared towards a successful and peaceful election in the year 2016.

It is chaired by Mr Paul Adu-Gyamfi, a former chairman of the NMC with other members as Professor Tsiri Agbenegah, Provost, College of health Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah university of Science and Technology (KNUST), Mr I.K Gyasi, a newspaper columnist and a former Headmaster of the T.I.Ahmadiyya Senior High School in Kumasi.

Mr Emmanuel Yeboah, Mr Jonathan Frimpong and Madam Ajoa Amankwa, are the rest.

The ceremony which was attended by the media in Ashanti, Members of the MAC, and the NMC was part of the project named “Improving media regulation in the Regions for Peaceful Election in 2016.

The project is receiving sponsorship from the Strengthening Transparency and Accountability and Responsiveness in Ghana (STAR-GHANA), a multi-donor pooled fund.

Mr George Sarpong, Executive Secretary of the NMC said the critical election calls for a more robust and responsible media which would rise to the occasion and do the right things since “every little slip can make bad things happen”.

Mr Adu-Gyamfi, who presided called on the public to keep an eye on the committee’s work and always alert them when they were going off-track.