Zakaria Musah Tanko, a media law and ethics lecturer and a private legal practitioner, has expressed concern over the recent spate of arrest of not just media practitioners but political commentators in the country.
Commenting on the recent arrest of some persons in relation to their utterances, he stated that the nation witnessing lots of interventions by the security agencies on issues of freedom of speech and expression, is another reason to be concerned.
According to Lawyer Tanko, the current situation calls for concern because it might be that either the security agencies are overreacting or the media is actually not doing what they are supposed to do.
“Whichever way you look at it, it’s not something that we are supposed to be pleased about. Because it tells me that there is something we are not doing right whether it’s from the side of the media or the security agencies.
“The media is a powerful player in our democratic dispensation and the security agencies also have the responsibility to pursue. And so, in the pursuance with the media’s role, when they come face to face with the law, what should the security agencies do?”
Zakaria Musah Tanko
The legal practitioner intimated that what is most worrisome till now is the fact that the various authorities still haven’t found a way of how best they can resolve some of these issues. He noted that authorities don’t necessarily have to use the criminal justice system as a first instance but rather look at another way to resolve these matters.
Relook training of Journalists
Lawyer Tanko further called for certain things to be relooked at especially with the way journalists in the country are trained. According to lawyer Tanko, where the nation has traveled from, its antecedents and where it is now, it will be a bit too extreme to conclude that there’s no freedom of expression in Ghana.
“We do have freedom of expression in Ghana but of course within the last few years, those aspects of the freedom of expression that we endured and because of the way these indices are looked at, we seem to be leaping down.”
Zakaria Musah Tanko
Touching on if the authorities are becoming unnecessarily tough or people are becoming unruly in their commentary, Lawyer Tanko averred that its conflicting since the agencies are doing their job as well as the media.
“Well for me, I get a bit conflicted when I observe some of these things because I am a journalist, a trainer of journalists and also a legal practitioner. When some of these alleged infraction on these journalists, I get conflicted because in one breadth you take some of these journalist through certain basic principles of journalism and you observe the media landscape and you do realize that once in a while some of our journalists do not adhere to those tenets that you take them through.”
Zakaria Musah Tanko
Read Also: GSE Market Capitalization Surpasses Last Year Values
