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Supreme Court strikes out NMC’s new media law

The court indicated that the NMC was to provide guidelines and not censor content.

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According to the court, the Content Standards Regulation 2015 which entreats all radio and television stations to seek content authorization from the NMC before airing a particular programme or in default pay a fine or serve a jail term, amounts to censorship, and is therefore unconstitutional.

The Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA) in January this year filed a motion at the Supreme Court over the new media content law by the National Media Commission.

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GIBA wanted the highest court of the land to strike out the new law as being inconsistent with the 1992 constitution which guarantees media freedom.

READ ALSO: GIBA

President of the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association Akwesi Agyemang had described the new legislations as a threat to media freedom.

“The Supreme Court is the supreme law of the land and so if there is any regulation or law that contravenes certain aspects of it, we need to seek interpretation and that is what we seek to do.

“If you take the regulation 3.2 which talks about imprisonment and fines for non-compliant it is something that we need interpretation”.

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