President Mahama Justifies BNI's Invitation Of CitiFM Boss

sQuashie

November 20, 2014 12:07 PM

President John Mahama, speaking at a national conference on broadcast pluralism, expressed disquiet about what he called the increasing ethical violations being perpetuated by some media practitioners.

He refered to the issue of a Ghanaian woman who was arrested with illegal substances in Heathrow, London. Citi FM boss, Samuel Atta Mensah and Editor of the Daily Graphic, Ransford Tettehwere on Monday invited and questioned by the BNI for publishing that the Ghanaian lady arrested in the UK with cocaine travelled on diplomatic passport. [No available link text]

"A Ghanaian stumbles across this story on social media. The broadcaster reports the alleged story in total without fact checking and posts the reported story on the station's website citing the source as the Nigerian news website."

"A website that a rudimentary internet search would within seconds prove does not actually exist."

"You begin to see the dangers that this type of journalism can pose to the society."

"Once it has been reported that this woman who is not a diplomat is in possession of a diplomatic passport, the Bureau of National Investigations had to perform its duties”.

“As irony will have it, the primary function of that institution is the pursuit of information for the security and safeguard of our nation and its citizens. In the investigations, the BNI narrowed down the stories to the original source of dissemination in Ghana to the Radio station and the Newspaper."

According to the Prez, the BNI just helped clarify issues.

sQuashie