Deputy Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Dzifa Gomashie-Ahiaglo, says the media must respect the privacy of late BBC World TV Broadcaster Komla Dumor and his grieving family.
“I’ll take this opportunity to plead with the media to understand that we have a culture, we have a tradition. Things are done differently in every culture, let us respect that and give family space to think through this and see how they can send their son off”, Gomashie told XYZ News at Komla’s father’s residence at Haatso in Accra on Monday.
She said inasmuch as the media are ferreting for information and wanting to be the first to publish same, there was the need for Journalists to respect the family’s space and be sensitive to their grieving.
“I know that everybody wants to be the first to break some news but the news has been broken. Komla is gone”.
She added: “The res t is for us as a people to appreciate that within the excitement, within the euphoria, within the shock, within all the emotions that we are going through, there’s a culture and tradition that must be upheld which is that we take our time and wait for family to absorb the shock and then think of how komla is going to be sent off”.
Pressed further about whether she was accusing the media of insensitivity, Dzifa Gormashie said: I will not allow you to drag me into any battle with the media”.
“…As a cultural person and also as a person that’s close to tradition, I want to respect that tradition of not running with peoples’ personal story and making it a public affair. His image is public but there’s a privacy that must not be disrespected. I don’t want to be dragged into a media war on this matter”, she stressed.
“I’m only asking for respect for tradition, respect for culture…the ways in which people from the Volta region mourn is not the same as the other cultures. Let’s just appreciate and respect that culture and tradition and give dignity to life and to the passing of such a hero and perhaps to remember that there’s a family that is grieving beyond all of us and what we want our stations to cover, There’s a father who is having to deal with the shock of hearing that ‘I’ve lost my son’. We should not lose sight of that in our quest to be the best station and best journalist in broadcasting the news; let us not remember how this old man is having to deal with the loss of a child”.
