Media will no more take politicians’ utterances seriously – Mustapha Hamid

The Minister of Information, Mustapha Hamid has stated that government officials must be wary of the information they put across adding that the media will examine it fairly.

Addressing journalists at the Media and Information Literacy symposium at the University of Ghana’s School of Information and Communication said that the era of government “re-diffusion sets” is over stating that:” the media has grown confident that they will no longer take what politicians say at face value.”

Mr. Hamid making reference to a Nigerian novelist, Wole Soyinka’s play Kongi’s Harvest written in 1965 in which people who are averse to feedback were cautioned.

“Now Joy FM even has what it calls Fact Checking where they take your speech one after the other and say this is true, partially true and wholly true,” he said.

The play said:“Who but a lunatic will bandy words with boxes with government Rediffusion sets, which talk and never take a lone word in reply,” the play said.

According to him:“We are in an era where even a President or a Vice President cannot get away with the things that they say,”.

He added role of the media in the country has made information very important.