Name and shame people who assault journalists - Martin Kpebu urges media

Silence emboldens people who attack journalists, Kpebu

People who attack journalists do so with impunity, Kpebu

Publish names of people who attack journalists, Martin Kpebu urges

A legal practitioner, Martin Kpebu, has called on the media to publicly name and shame persons who attack journalists, to reduce any further incidents of impunity of such nature.

He explained that there have been several instances where journalists have been attacked by security personnel but the cases have been handled in private, a situation that has unconsciously emboldened others to continue to attack journalists.

Speaking at an event on press freedom in Accra, on the theme, “Measuring Ghana’s Free Press and Democracy: The Obstacles and the Way Forward”, Martin Kpebu called for the media to call out such perpetrators.

“We are all too familiar with the violence meted out to journalists day in, day out. The violence takes various forms: assault by state actors, the military, the police and the National Security… they’ve really been the bane of the freedom of speech and freedom of the press in Ghana.

“Remember how some military officers beat some journalists to pulp, the GJA had to intervene and then… they all settled it quietly… we shouldn’t countenance that in the future because you see, if you do not hold people accountable, the impunity will continue. So, you see that this incident and a few of them that the GJA took up with the military top brass and all that, but since then, haven’t we had other cases of brutalities.

The legal practitioner was of the view that, naming and shaming of culprits found to be involved in the attacks would help serve as a deterrent to any other possible offenders thereby reducing the number of attacks on journalists.

“So, you see, Caleb Kudah’s brutality happened after the soldiers were not punished. You see the impunity? If the soldiers had been punished even if the military didn’t want to sanction them internally if they had given up their identity and the GJA too… had published their names, that is naming and shaming, it would have helped,” he said.