World TV Day: Govt must monitor media contents – Dr. Ekua Ekuamah

Former theatre arts head of department at the University of Ghana calls on government to monitor the display of content on televisions.

Dr. Ekua Ekuamah, a former head of the theatre arts department at the University of Ghana, has called on the government to monitor the display of information and content from television stations in the country.

The call comes in light of the celebration of World Television Day which falls on November 21 every year to highlight the impact of television in our lives as a symbol of communication and globalization in the contemporary world. This year’s world TV day was celebrated under the theme, “TV makes a difference”.

She also highlighted the recent display of too much foreign content on the TVs and stated that Ghanaians must be more careful of the kind of programs we watch from the TV screens.

“We really have to be careful of the messages that are sent to the public through the screens. I think the government has a responsibility to monitor how information is passed through the TV. We can now get most of these TV content on Netflix and now people are not looking at the content it’s all about how do we get viewers and funds so we should be able to look at these things.”

Dr. Ekua Ekuamah is also of the view that Television plays a very important role in the socialization of the country.

“TV is such a dominant thing within our lives and in our homes. It has so much power and its evolution in the kind has been gradual but before we realized it has made a great impact on our lives. It has brought families together as people would socialize because of the TV so I think over time TV has played a dominant role in our lives but we have to be careful of what information we are taking from that place.”

She further stressed the need to display more Ghanaian content in order to portray and educate young ones on the relevance of our culture.

“We definitely have to celebrate our Ghanaian culture, which is the key. We have to go back and re-evaluate our display of content and teach our culture in our programs using that to educate our young ones. Even if they say it’s outdated we need to find interesting ways of putting them so that it can get the attention of these young ones.”