The government has been urged to put in place mechanisms to enable media organisations to recover from the shocks of the current economic challenges facing the country.
Private Newspapers and Online News Publishers Association (PRINPAG), who made the call, said this would foster a close partnership and collaboration between the media and the government in the interest of the development of the country.
This was contained in a press release issued and signed by Mr Andrew Edwin Arthur, President of PRINPAG in Accra on Wednesday to commemorate this year’s World Press Freedom Day.
He stressed the need to protect journalists and their sources from censorship, intimidation, and any act of violence.
“This year’s World Press Freedom Day must serve as a wake-up call to all lovers of media freedom to stand up and to defend media practitioners by condemning all acts that end up negatively affecting the practice of journalism in this country,” he added.
He urged the government’s media handlers not to discriminate in their dealings with the media but to open up and to bring all media practitioners and their organisations on board to promote the national agenda.
Mr Arthur said the government should reconsider or restrategise on its media policy, particularly the distribution of state sponsored adverts so as to benefit the majority of media houses in the country, a move PRINPAG believed, would go a long way in sustaining the Ghanaian media and saving them from collapse.
“PRINPAG is urging the government and its media handlers to consider bringing all media houses onto a common platform, irrespective of perceived political persuasion as a way of making information readily accessible to all to avoid the situation where due to lack of information some media houses were left with no option than to engage in speculations and conjectures to survive,” he said.
“This way, the government and its media handlers will be promoting press freedom and pluralism of the media, which is crucial for our development in these contemporary times, not forgetting the need to respect and uphold the right to freedom of expression, as enshrined in Chapter 5 of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana,” he added.
He said PRINPAG was of the firm conviction that, the common agenda in the fight against media oppression and press freedom, was to enforce the right to access information that allows them to seek, receive and disseminate information, ideas, concepts and beliefs across borders and cultures.
The President called on all media stakeholders, especially the government, to as a matter of urgency, prioritise the welfare and wellbeing of journalists throughout the country so as to ensure that, they were better placed to lend support to the national agenda.
He called for a swift release of outcomes/information on investigations into deaths and attacks on Journalists in their line of duty in Ghana.
BY TIMES REPORTER
