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A communications expert, Professor Kwame Karikari, has stressed the need for Ghanaians to demand from owners of media organisations, rules of conduct and engagement, so that their journalists carry out their duties as professionals.

In addition, he said, the associations of media organisations, for instance, the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA) and the Private Newspaper Publishers Association of Ghana (PRINPAG), should state clearly the professional code of conduct for the industry to serve as a guide for their members.

That, he maintained, would help promote professionalism in the media space and curb the spate of recklessness and abuse of press freedom being recorded currently.

Speaking at a roundtable on exploring the boundaries of freedom of speech in Accra last Friday, Professor Karikari said: “There's been too much recklessness and abuse of press freedom. There is too much unprofessionalism and a lot of citizens are insulted and abused and journalists go scot-free. But we do not have an effective regulatory system in the newsroom, industry or national level, to check unprofessionalism in the media.”

Event

The roundtable was organised by the National Media Commission (NMC), in collaboration with Citi FM and Citi TV, a broadcast media organisation in Accra.

Other panellists were a private legal practitioner, Ace Annan Ankomah, and the Executive Secretary of the NMC, Samuel Sarpong, with submissions from the Chairman of the NMC, Yaw Boadu Ayeboafoh, and the President of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), Affail Monney.

Propaganda

Prof. Karikari, who is the immediate past Board Chairman of the Graphic Communications Group Limited, indicated that radio stations that were there for political parties were not practising professional journalism but were propaganda tools.
 
“We must not mix the two; so strictly speaking, we may not require those partisan media to behave like the non-partisan media. Unfortunately, the partisan media try to present themselves professionally, but they are not,” he said.

Among other things, he indicated that professionalism did not consist of propaganda or using the media for a section of society to gain political power because that involved political interests.