<<Print>>

In 1993, the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) dragged the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) to court for not giving a live coverage of a seminar organised by the party to comment on the 1993 budget. The NPP was aggrieved because GBC had given full coverage of a similar event organised by the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) for its supporters on the 23rd and 24th January 1993. In a unanimous decision on 22nd July that same year, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the NPP. Per Justice G.R.M. Francois, �The free exchange of views is necessary to give the electorate an opportunity to assess the performance of government in power as against the potential of an opposition in the wilderness. It keeps the government on its toes and gives the neutral, apolitic citizen an opportunity to make up his or her mind.� The judge could not have said it better. The media, especially the electronic, are very powerful tools in election campaigns. It is not in vain that the framers of the 1992 Constitution made adequate provisions on the need for state-owned media to provide equal platform for various political views. Unfortunately, however, the reason for which NPP went to court in 1993 is still very much with us. In the run up to the 2008 elections, many people expressed concerns about the manner in which the state-owned media covered the elections. In column entitled �Ananse the Vulcaniser�, the Daily Graphic�s ace columnist, George Sydney Abugri, wrote: �Campaign reports on television are getting more and more intriguing as Election Day keeps hurtling towards us with increasing momentum. Several television stations telecast a report on the same campaign rally: In one telecast, the camera pans across the crowd in such a way that you think you are seeing all of humanity in one single sweep of the lens. �You watch a telecast of the same rally by another station and the camera pans at very strange angles and for only short distances across the crowd! One campaign rally, two sharply contrasting images. Intriguing, Jomo. Absolutely intriguing.� Mr Sydney Abugri did not name the station or the victimised political party, but any objective monitor of the media in 2008 showed a disturbing bias on the part of the state media in favour the ruling NPP as contained in a report published by the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) after monitoring the campaign and elections in Ghana. �The state-owned television and radio broadcasters failed to provide equal or equitable coverage of the candidates or their parties in line with constitutional provisions,� the report states. �During the campaign period for the 7 December 2008 elections Ghana Television (GTV) dedicated 33 per cent of its peak time coverage of political actors to NPP. �NDC received 19 per cent, with CPP afforded 15 per cent and PNC 10 per cent. Presidential activities were widely covered by GTV and these activities received a total of 20 per cent share of this channel�s coverage of political actors, thus granting the NPP an advantage in terms of the amount of airtime it received. �The coverage of Radio Uniiq [GBC Radio] followed a broadly similar trend with 32 per cent of its coverage of political actors afforded to NPP, 19 per cent to NDC, 15 per cent to CPP and 10 per cent to PNC. The president received 17 per cent share of political coverage on this station.� �During the second round run-off campaign period 70 per cent of GTV�s coverage of political actors was of the NPP, its ministers or the president. Similarly, they received 66 per cent share of coverage of political actors on Radio Uniiq.� The report also shows that the state-owned newspapers gave more time to the NPP than the rest. It however lauds the private television stations for providing �broadly balanced coverage of the two main parties.� According to the report, �most of the commercial radio stations monitored by the EU EOM acted with responsibility for most of the campaign period. The one exception was Radio Gold that constantly criticised the NPP in its programming ... �Joy FM and Peace FM provided balanced coverage of the two main parties with NPP and NDC receiving a 38 and 34 per cent share of coverage of political actors on Joy FM and 32 and 28 per cent on Peace FM with the remaining coverage largely afforded to the PNC and CPP. Radio Gold allocated a greater amount of airtime to NDC (46 per cent) than to NPP (32 per cent).� I have decided to quote this report extensively to serve as a basis for appraising the recent decision by the government to boycott media outlets belonging to the Multimedia Group Limited. The boycott was announced by no other person but a former anchor of Radio Gold and now Deputy Minister of Information, Mr James Agyenim Boateng. He cited instances of bias against the government by the Multimedia family, especially Joy FM, as the reason for the boycott. The decision to boycott Multimedia outlets, especially Joy FM, was mind boggling because if the government was indeed acting against irresponsible and bias journalism, then Joy FM should have been one of the last media organisations to target. The EU EOM report quoted above indicates that while in opposition, it was the private stations like Joy that gave NDC equal platform to reach out to voters when the state-owned media was almost monopolised by the ruling party.