Speaker of Ghana’s Parliament, Alban Bagbin says the media plays a larger role in the running of every society globally.
According to him, information shared across media platforms can either lead to an uprising or calm in any given society and asked the Ghanaian media to be circumspect in their reportage and dealings.
“Everything people hear is from the media. If you don’t like my nose and you decide to use different words for what I’ve said, it will convey different meanings to them and the impact and effect of that meaning will revibrate and cause either some positive or negative vibes on society. So the media whether people like it or not is the make or break of every society,
not the President,” he stated.
Addressing a delegation from Global Media Alliance Broadcasting Company (GMABC) who paid a courtesy call to him, Speaker Bagbin indicated that the media is not a private commodity.
“There’s been some debate as to what people call public or private media.
The media is not a private commodity but the media is a public commodity. The utility value of the media is not for any private person, it’s for the public benefit.”
Listing some functions of the media, the Speaker noted that everything the media does is for the public benefit and to throw light on dark corners so evil does not thrive.
He added that it is also responsible for ensuring discipline and responsibility amongst citizens.
In the political angle, he stated that the media’s role is “to serve as our Holy books have been telling us that politics is the greatest charity work that one can indulge in and in many countries that have developed that’s what politics is about. If in an era of COVID-19, a minister makes a mistake and kissed another person and it is raised, you resign.
Why? Because he doesn’t want that to corrupt the public morals for someone to site it. So he has admitted that what he did was wrong irrespective of the position. The law is the law and we all got to know that because of the media
If not for the media, they could have done it and gone away and no one would have heard it. So the media cannot be a private commodity for people to buy and control.”
The media is regarded as the fourth arm of government and has an oversight responsibility on the other arms of government. But this role seems to be waning as political actors and private individuals have taken over the media space.
The commercialisation of the media space has moved it from objectivity to ‘who pays the piper dictates the tune’.
By: Gyamfuah Owusu-Ackom
