Manasseh Azure Awuni
A Presidential staffer, Evron R. Hughes has conceded that even though he does not like everything controversial award-winning investigative journalist Manasseh Azure Awuni writes, he admires his “stubborn perseverance”.
Mr Hughes, who is an Economic Adviser in the Office of the Vice President, disclosed this in a Facebook post sighted by MyNewsGh.com
In the said post, while acknowledging that “a free, strong and sometimes irreverent press is a bulwark against abuse of power, corruption…” he laments the Ghanaian media’s shortcomings: ‘… we must also remind ourselves that the media can so easily be corrupted, and abuse its “mandate” in even more sinister ways than government can.”
He further argues that there is the need to check the excesses of the media, averring that “if you listen closely, the local media seems to think it is acting on behalf, and in the interest of the people…And this is where, with profound sadness, I think the Ghanaian media has failed itself. And all of us. I say they have failed because they are not listening to the people, the very same people in whose interest they claim to act.”
Mr Hughes buttressed his point on the need for some scrutiny on the media by citing Afrobarometer Surveys in which significant percentages of people have agreed that ‘Government should have the right to prevent the media form publishing things it considers harmful to society’.
“It is a growing recognition that though the media can be a force good, it can equally be for evil too, and is therefore worth scrutinizing,” he adds.
