GJA urged to look beyond the Baby Ansaba's confession

Aburi (E/R), Feb. 11, GNA - The National President of the Christian Friends of Democracy (CFD), Rev Samuel Adjei, has appealed to the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) to look beyond the confession of Baby Ansab= a and bring to book all media practitioners publishing fabricated stories about people. He said the GJA could not claim to be ignorant about the daily protests of people against whom concocted stories were published by some media personnel and urged the association to take strong decisions on tho= se issues if it wanted sanity to prevail in the practice of journalism. Rev. Adjei was reacting to the confession by Baby Ansaba, the editor= of an Accra based weekly, that some of the stories his newspaper carried on the then candidate Prof John Atta Mills were concocted. He said journalism in the country was facing a lot of challenges an= d it was time that the GJA was supported to stand up to these challenges. Rev Adjei said Ghana had come a long way and there was the need for t= he whole society to find a way of resolving whatever differences existed "wi= th love and unity". He cited a case in 1998 when the CFD called for the establishment of a National Government of Unity but a media house concocted a story that his=

organization had been given vehicles, T-shirts and money by Mr Michael Sousoudis, a leading member of the EGLE party, to promote a political agenda.

Rev. Adjei cited another issue where Mr Kwesi Pratt, Managing Director of the "Insight" newspaper, was accused of taking huge sums of money as bribe and the story was widely published by the media. He said in all those examples and many others, the GJA did not ta= ke on those erring journalists and so it would be unfair for Baby Ansaba's c= ase to be handled in isolation. Rev Adjei appealed to the GJA to put "its foot down" and ensure that a= ll media practitioners concocting stories are brought to book for order to prevail and the Ghanaian media to protect their image.