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The National Peace Council in the Ashanti Region has expressed concern with media houses openly arbitrating family conflicts, insisting it goes against both tradition and law.
The concern comes on the back of a booming appeal for radio programs that mimic marriage tribunals where complaints of aggrieved persons are heard and discussed with sensation.
These programs command enormous listenership in the mass market of the Ashanti Region, exact authority, interviewing parties to cases on air without their prior consent, and enforcing arbitrary rulings.
Ashanti Regional Executive Secretary of the Council, Rev. Badu Amoah, who is worried about these uncensored conflict resolution platforms, cautions that the programs infringe on moral, legal, and traditional codes that protect and preserve society.
Speaking on the Ultimate Breakfast Show, he insisted that marriage issues are not conducted with intellectualism and sensationalism but with a deep understanding of the context of the disagreeing parties.
“As a counselor myself, even in alternative dispute resolution, that is not how to resolve issues,” Rev. Amoah contended.
Highlighting the disgrace visited on innocent homes through such radio and television programs, he lamented, “They are just postponing communal conflicts because when you have a conflict between two individuals, it involves two families. The innocent children suffer.”
He stressed that tradition and law uphold the principle of handling such sensitive matters discreetly, unlike radio and television programs, which hold such discussions in the full view of the public without any mechanism to conceal the identities of the conflicting families.
“In our traditions, we don’t discuss family issues in public,” he cautioned.
Rev. Badu Amoah indicated that all attempts to address the issue with media institutions, traditional authorities, and the Ghana Bar Association had yet to yield any positive results.
