Professor Ransford Gyampo, a prominent lecturer at the University of Ghana, has warned that, while press freedom is important in Ghana, media practitioners should not be treated as "tin gods."
For Ghana's democracy to prosper, he believes the media must be allowed to operate in a free and convenient atmosphere. Nonetheless, he stated that attempts to create a lively media must not result in a crop of media professionals who operate unethically.
"We must safeguard press freedom as a nation." But let us be careful not to turn certain people into tin gods and goddesses in the process. We must denounce the deceptive assaults by political land guards on social media and demand that they are stopped.
Higher-ranking authorities' public statements and body language, including the President of the Republic's, must immediately acknowledge the issues we confront and convey a clear message of intolerance for acts that undermine journalistic freedom," he said on Facebook on Saturday.
"We must oppose any attempt to impose media dictatorship on our democratic practice," he said in his post. Media professionals must understand that they cannot be exempt from the law simply because they have access to platforms that others do not.
They need to reconsider their sensationalism and the purposeful attempts by some to lie, smear people's reputations, and refuse to withdraw and apologize appropriately. These would always be a prescription for activities to weaken press freedom from all sides."
"While the government has a role to play in addressing the present bad show in terms of media freedom," he said in his piece, "media practitioners must also have a duty to play in terms of being responsible while freely going about their profession." Because media freedom can never be used to justify media dictatorship."
Professor Gyampo's remarks came after Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a France-based NGO, released a study on Ghana's Press Freedom Index on Tuesday, May 3.
Ghana's press freedom performance was detailed in the report.
According to them, Ghana has slipped 30 places in Reporters Without Borders' latest press freedom ranking for 2022.
Ghana had a score of 67.43 in the study, which was issued to mark International Press Freedom Day 2022. Ghana was ranked 60th out of 180 nations.
Following the publication of the study, public opinion on the situation of press freedom in the country has been split.
While some have claimed that the study accurately reflects the situation of the Ghanaian press, others have cast doubt on it.
Concerning the substance of the report, Prof. Gyampo repeated on Saturday in a Facebook post that it is unpatriotic for Ghanaians to accept news from foreign sources without first consulting local research results.
He previously stated on Thursday's AM Show that the practice of foreign organizations conducting a study on Ghanaian events is neocolonial and an insult to the country's sovereignty.
He believes Ghana is an independent country, thus he doesn't understand why outsiders continue to do such assessments of the country.
In an interview with the presenter, political scientist Benjamin Akakpo argued that there are numerous respectable channels in Ghana. As a result, doing a study on press freedom in a sovereign state is pointless for a foreign organization.
"Some of these works and reports from outsiders have always been against my principles." What is their location in Ghana? Also, who gave them permission to come to perform these studies? What is their justification?