Montie FM not attractive – GIBA Council member

The Accra-based radio station, Montie FM has carved an unattractive name for itself since its inception, George Foster Baffour, Executive Council Member of the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA), has said.

The FM station has been in the news for wrong reasons after allowing panellists on its political programme ‘Pampaso’, to threaten to kill judges of Ghana’s highest court if they were not wary of their conduct in the case involving the Electoral Commission and Mr Abu Ramadan. The panellists said the justices could suffer the fate of the three members of the bench who were shot to death and burnt on June 30, 1982, in the era of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC).

These two personalities have been widely condemned by the general public especially the Ghana Bar Association (GBA). They were reportedly picked up by the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) for questioning.

Recently, in the second report of the Media Foundation for West Africa’s campaign language monitoring project, the radio station recorded the highest number (16) of indecent expressions, mainly on its Pampaso programme.

Speaking in relation to the threats targeted at the judges in an interview with Prince Minkah, host of the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Class 91.3 FM on Monday July 4, Mr Foster Baffour said: “What sometimes is a little bit saddening is the fact that sometimes we don’t have the fact, we don’t know what the truth is, and sometimes we get a little too sentimental and a little too emotional at the path of the political divide that we belong to and I think that whichever way it is, we should condemn this in no uncertain terms.”

He added: “We [GIBA] are meeting this week because some of the reports that we have heard and some of the reports that are written out are very unattractive and very distasteful. But I am assuring you we are going to come out with an official stance on this”.

“What is very important is that we also mean to intensify our training programmes and our education as to how decorous we should be when it comes to issues like that. With Montie FM, I will like to be a little reticent as to what I should say about them, but trust me I believe that they have carved a name that is not attractive as far as such instances are concerned but let me reiterate the point that GIBA will be coming out with an emphatic statement very soon.”