Prioritise safety of journos - MFWA to media owners

The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has urged media owners to prioritise the safety of journalists and has called for an all-stakeholder approach to ensure journalists are secure.

Over 100 media practitioners were subjected to severe physical assault in Ghana between January 2012 and July 2015, with about 85 out of the number sustaining various degrees of injury.

Though the perpetrators of such attacks have been condemned by some regulatory media organisations like the National Media Commission, the Ghana Journalists Association, and other stakeholders, the situation has seen little change.

Speaking on the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Class91.3FM on Thursday June 30, Executive Director of the MFWA Sulemana Braimah said journalists must act professionally and take their personal safety seriously in the discharge of their duties.

“Sometimes, people get to be high-handed on the basis that a journalist may have conducted his or herself in a very unprofessional way and it becomes so difficult. Even though you will say whatever the case, it will not justify a physical assault or some other forms of abuse, it becomes so difficult to justify why a journalist would act in a way that one would have acted, and so there are questions of professionalism. We need to be conscious about our personal safety as we go out there. Our media organisations need to be conscious and plan towards the safety of their journalists and other workers in the media organisation and, of course, groups like us and other civil society organisations will need to continue and, perhaps, even improve what we are already doing” he stated.

Mr Braimah condemned the continued attacks on journalists in the country and the impunity with which such attacks are carried out.

He said there was the urgent need for a more concerted effort in fighting the impunity that emboldens attacks on journalists.

“The media organisations or the bosses of these journalists will say we want to treat this as an internal matter. I think these are the kinds of things that breed impunity because, then, people feel we can do whatever we can do and at best, either we will apologise or push for it to be treated as an internal matter. So media organisations have a big role to play and as journalists, I keep emphasising and I believe that…our safety is as important as the professionalism we must exhibit in doing our work,” he noted.