Minister appeals to 3 porn TV stations

The Minister of Information, Mustapha Hamid, has appealed to the three porn television stations, TV XYZ, Ice TV and Thunder TV, to desist from showing pornographic movies on their networks.

According to the minister, showing such content on free-to-air stations is “not right” and “offensive” to the “moral sense we have carved for ourselves” as a nation.

The minister added that this is supposed to be private adult material to be accessed in private and not meant for public consumption.

Speaking on TV3’s Hot Issue last Saturday, the minister pointed out that “it is in our calendar to send the broadcasting law to parliament next year for passage. Hopefully when we get to the broadcasting law and we succeed in getting it passed, we will have proper regulation for what it is that people can broadcast and what it is that people cannot broadcast. But as I said, until that time comes, we are sort of handicapped a bit.”

He stressed that for now, the government can at best appeal to the conscience of local television stations not to broadcast explicit sexual content on their various networks.

It would be recalled that two broadcasters, Tommy Annan-Forson and James Oberko, on Monday, June 12 presented a petition to the National Media Commission (NMC) and the Ministry of Information against the three private television stations they claimed are showing pornographic movies.

In addition to the petition, the petitioners also presented an album of compiled photos taken from porn scenes shown across the television stations in question.

According to petitioners, it is against the broadcasting standards for television stations to show porn materials irrespective of what time they are shown.