'Bogus' MFWA Foul Language Report 'NDC-Sponsored' � Adorye

The Media Foundation for West Africa’s recent report on monitoring of indecent campaign language on radio is “bogus” and should be placed in the trash can, Hopeson Adorye, a member of the opposition New Patriotic Party’s communication team, has said.

Mr Adorye shared the infamous top spot with former NPP General Secretary Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie, also known as Sir John, and Deputy Coordinator of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) Joseph Yamin, as three of seven politicians who used the most abusive language on radio.

The latest report, according to MFWA, is based on monitoring of 972 programmes on 40 radio stations across the country for the period of May 16-31, 2016.

In all, 58 indecent expressions were recorded on 17 out of the 40 radio stations monitored.

But reacting to the MFWA publication on Accra100.5FM’s breakfast show, Ghana Yensom, on Thursday June 30, Mr Adorye said: “It must be put in the dustbin. The work they did was bad. They have been motivated by the NDC to do this work for them. I am saying this without fear or favour that Sulemana [Braimah] – the executive director of the MFWA – has been motivated by the NDC…to do this work.”

Mr Adorye said Mr Braimah was widely known to be doing the bidding of the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) while working with The Chronicle newspaper; hence he was not surprised with the skewed nature of the outcome.

He said NDC communicators on radio were rather in the habit of using bad language on radio, and had made a sport of hurling unprintables at NPP flagbeaer Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on air. Mr Adorye, who lost out in his ambition to be NPP National Organiser in 2014 to Mr John Boadu, wondered, for instance, why Mr Koku Anyidoho, the deputy general secretary of the NDC, had not received any mention in the report despite what he claimed were his ceaseless vitriol on the person of Mr Akufo-Addo.

He told show host Chief Jerry Forson that he was not surprised that Montie FM, a station he said was sympathetic to the NDC, this time placed seventh in the list of offending radio stations, as the MFWA was afraid to, once again, provoke the ire of the media house, which had subjected staff of the MFWA and their kith and kin to relentless abuse in the week that immediately followed the foundation’s publication of its report for the first half of May 2016, which rated the station top of the list of media houses where incendiary language was aired.

“But I want to assure them that nobody can silence me in this country, I will continue to do my work in this country, I will speak my mind,” he said, advising Mr Braimah to grab a John Mahama T-shirt and join his campaign instead of masquerading as a professional trying to curb inflammatory speech on the airwaves.

“It is so sad and I will urge all Ghanaians to drop this report in the dustbin,” he concluded.