Media Violated Princess Ada's Privacy

The Ghana Journalist Association (GJA) has condemned in the strongest form the dissemination of YFM Presenter, Ms Ada’s nude pictures on social and traditional media by some individuals and media houses.

 
The YFM presenter has been in the news for sometime now after pictures of her alleged sexual assault and abduction went viral on Monday.
 
Speaking on Citi FM’s news analysis programme, The Big Issue, the President of the GJA, Affail Monney blamed the media for spreading the photos.
 
Mr Monney further criticised the media for violating her privacy.
 
“Article 5 of our own [GJA] code of ethics says the privacy and dignity of every person shall be respected. Article 16 of the 1992 constitution which is the supreme law of the land says the dignity of all persons shall be valued and clearly the dignity of the lady in person has been violated,” Monney argued. On Wednesday it emerged that Ms Ada’s alleged abduction and sexual assault was staged.
 
But Monney still believes that the media had no justification for spreading such photos since they are required to abide and be guided by the ethics enshrined in both the constitution and the GJA code of ethics irrespective of the circumstances.
 
“This is a lady whose motives can be questioned but at the same time we have an ethical obligation to ensure that you don’t capitalise on some of these revelations to expose people of questionable character whether they are raped or not. I had grief to see excerpts of the media feeding public on vulgarity and profanity and this is dangerous,” Money fumed.
 
He therefore advised the media to refrain from capitalising on such incidents to attract readership.
 
On Thursday, the Police held a press conference to update Ghanaians on new developments emerging from the incident but they only presented facts from the suspects’ perspective.
 
The Police explained that they were unable to take the victim’s side of the story because she needs to be mentally examined before she can be interrogated. Speaking on the show, Mr Dafeamekpor said: “We must exercise restraint in the flogging the matter. We are told that she still has not spoken so I believe that we should exercise restraint.We must contain all of these and let Ada be in her truest state of her mind and speak to the issue”.