Accra, Dec. 18, GNA - The Auditor- General, Mr Edward Dua Agyeman has appealed to Journalists to establish a peer review mechanism to ensure compliance with the ethics of their profession.
The Auditor- General, who was speaking to the Ghana News Agency, said the Media would be perceived to have put the society under siege if campaigns such as the recent one of calumny and vilification waged against him by an Accra private newspaper using falsehood and half-truths were perpetrated.
"If the Society feels unduly threatened by the Media it would soon start agitating for measures to control these excesses and that would not engender the extension of the frontiers of press freedom we all desire," he said.
Mr Agyeman, who showed the GNA copies of official correspondence to buttress his points, said if only the Editor of that private newspaper had exercised the basic Journalistic ethic of crosschecking of facts, he would not have published that he was sacked from the Audit Service.
"I resigned from the Audit Service as per my letter of resignation dated 30 June 1989 to the Chief of Staff. My resignation was in protest against my posting to the National Investigation Committee," he said.
Mr Agyeman showed to the GNA an official letter signed by Mr Ato Dadzie, PNDC Secretary, dated April 18 1989, which stated in paragraph two: "By authority of this letter Mr E.D. Agyeman is being recalled from the Audit Service and re-posted to the National Investigation Committee".
The Auditor-General said the trumpeting of such blatant falsehood tarnished the reputation of citizens and subjected them to ridicule. He suggested to Radio Presenters to exercise a great deal of circumspection and should not pander to those who might attempt to use the airwaves to propagate falsehood in pursuit of their selfish agenda. The Auditor-General referred to a recent interview granted to Mr Osei Tutu Prempeh, former Auditor -General, on Accra FM radio stations, in which he traded in falsehood and asked why the Presenters did not draw his attention to the fact that he could not malign a person, who was not sharing the platform with him?
Or why the Presenters did not call him to listen to the accusations so that he could have confronted him with the cold facts as captured in official documents?
"Journalism we are told is about truth and every Journalist must endeavour to uphold the truth at all times. Any deviation from this principle undermines the profession and the Ghana Journalist Association must do something drastic to heal such abrasions," he said.
