Media expert, Prof. Kwame Karikari, has called on media practitioners across the Africa Continent to rekindle the fight to protect and defend press freedom and democracy.
“There appear to be a decline in the commitment to the fight to protect and defend press freedom across the continent. The spirit must be rekindled media professional associations and human rights advocacy organisations”, he said.
Prof. Karikari that the waning fight was also as a result of lack of international support for advocacy work in democracy causes and media freedom and therefore appealed for the strengthening of support to enhance the civil society capacity to wage campaigns to defend democratic causes.
Without such movement, Prof. Karikari said democracy principles would continue to be under attack by “democracy capture” which would prevent citizens from enjoying the fruits of democracy.
Speaking at two-day regional conference in Accra attended by media experts, consultants and practitioners within West Africa under the theme “The media, press freedom and the democratic recession in West Africa, Prof. Karikari said there was a need for citizens in the West Africa region to strive to promote media pluralism and diversity to restore democracy from its current threats and challenges.
The conference was to work towards promoting press freedom and rebuild democracy in the West Africa region at a time of coups and terrorist activities.
‘Democracy Capture’, Prof Karikari noted perpetuated corruption of media professionalism by engaging mercenary journalists whose operations of manipulating public opinion included attacking and intimidating critical and opposing journalists on behalf of their political pay masters.
He explained “Democracy Capture” referred to situation where elites coopt, corrupt, or pervert the nature of democratic institutions in order to impose policies that work towards maintaining the privileged status of the same elites.
“Where in the past dictatorship used editors, columnists and commentators in the state-owned media to hound and frighten critics and opposition voices, today the enablers of ‘democracy capture’ employ hatchet men in the private media sector”, he further indicated.
Measures Outline
Outlining some steps to address the concerns, Prof. Karikari urged the independent media to continue to report issues of human right abuses and support social justice causes while striving to forge partnership and alliances, in-country and across borders to share publications and programme designed to expose incidents of ‘democracy capture’ and to promote democracy cause.
Prof. Karikari proposed that participants at the conference came out with resolutions for strategies to enhance the roles of media in the struggle to defend, promote and strengthen the values, principles and institutions of democracy in their countries.
The resident representative of ECOWAS in Ghana, ambassador Baba Gana Wakil, said misinformation and disinformation had increasingly become a worrisome phenomenon which had impacted on participatory governance and the entire democratic outlook of most member states in the region.
The executive director of Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), Sulemana Braimah ECOWAS he noted have been playing a lot of roles in democratic governance and peace building which he noted has made the overstretched on the issue. He urged participants to use the conference as a platform to deliberate on steps that would help democracy back to its former glory.
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