Full disclosure needed on media fund
Over the past few days, the issue of the Media Development Fund (MDF) has occupied centre stage in public discussions and although this may appear to be a recent matter, it has been a long time coming.
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Now, the issue is mired in politics as every issue sooner than later gets garbed in party colours. We have to thank the Media Foundation for West Africa and scores of media houses for raising this issue, although we are no wiser after spending days on the matter.
Luckily, this case can be settled very quickly if we use the paper trail approach to answer some important questions. Resolving those questions will not only resolve the specific matter of the MDF but also explain how government decisions are made and implemented.
In the first place, the government would have decided to establish a Media Development Fund after consultations, which would normally include publishing a White Paper. It would help very much to publish the minutes of all the discussions that culminated in the decision. The minutes and decisions taken would show clearly who participated in the decision-making, what justifications were provided, and more importantly, how “media development” was defined in those discussions.
Since the fund would eventually mean disbursing public funds, it would be inconceivable that no such discussions took place or that those discussions were not captured in the minutes. We can therefore only resolve this matter if we know that we are talking about one and the same thing. Let us look at it this way: the government spends public money on our behalf; if it wants to buy RLG laptops for every journalist and every Member of Parliament in this country, it can find a justification to do so. It could for example, call it the Laptops for all programme. No one could argue it did not have the right to do so.
The government could have decided to distribute the laptops through any of several agencies such the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, district assemblies or whatever, and that would be its right. However, the fund was created for MEDIA DEVELOPMENT, which in normal language would have a certain distinctive definition or understanding. This is why it is important for the government to publish the minutes of its meetings so that all Ghanaians would know if we have a common understanding of the term “media development”.
Having such an understanding is not only important for the current discussion but also for the nature of governance under our democracy. I was worried when the name of the Ministry of Information was changed under the Mahama government to the Ministry of Information and Media Relations. It sent a shiver down my spine because it was veering towards the province of “media control”, which the 1992 Constitution has renounced absolutely. However, without any evidence, one had to rein in the fear and assume that President Mahama would not allow his government to roll back the years of press freedom and freedom of expression in the country.
Nevertheless, the time has come to find out what the nature of media relations under this government. Citizens should have asked this question months ago, because the change of name had to have a reason and the reason had to have a purpose in fulfilment of which public resources would be needed. Was the name of the Ministry changed just because it sounds nice or to make the Minister feel more grand and important? Parliament ought to have asked and stayed on that question until an answer was received. It is an important question because freedom of expression and the independence of the state-owned media are at the heart of the 1992 Constitution’s democracy agenda and without the centrality of that notion, the whole edifice of democratic pluralism will collapse.
Is it the case, perchance, that the Ministry’s new name implies that it has the responsibility to “develop” the media in order to “relate” to them? If that is the understanding of the Ministry, it has to explain how it intends to do the “development” and to show what results it seeks to achieve. This is also important because if the development is to lead in any way, shape or form to censorship or control, that would be unconstitutional and illegal. It is only by publishing the minutes and all other documents relating to this laptop distribution matter that we would know the Ministry’s thinking or its intentions.
If, on the other hand, “media development” is meant to imply the common ideas contained in those words, then our task is to examine whether the Ministry of Information would be the most suitable institution to carry it out. The commonsense understanding of media development would be to improve journalism in the country. Luckily for us, our constitution has mandated the National Media Commission, under Article 167 (b) “to take all appropriate measures to ensure the establishment and maintenance of the highest journalistic standards in the mass media including the investigation, mediation and settlements of complaints made against or by the press and other mass media.” Nothing could be clearer than this in establishing where the constitutional mandate to “develop” the media lies.
In the olden days (before 1992) when autocracy and arbitrariness were the order of the day, the Ministry of Information under any other name could do as it wished. But those days are over, and the words of the Constitution override the mere wishes of any government or even the President—so there cannot be any confusion over who must administer “media development”. Indeed, the Ministry itself, according to reports, tried to set up some committee to administer the fund. Now, this is interesting. Why did the Ministry find it necessary to establish a committee?
The National Media Commission includes representatives from the Presidency, the Ghana Journalists Association, the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association, the private press and for good measure, the Ghana Bar Association, the TUC, and others. The only reason the Ministry would set up a committee is because it is not directly represented at the NMC. The makers of our Constitution did not directly include the Ministry of Information in the NMC composition because its presence would potentially subvert the need to “insulate the state-owned media from government control (Article 167 (c).
If the logic for omitting the Ministry is to avert the temptation to put the state-owned media under “government control” and decrease the independence of the media, it would go against commonsense to then put the Ministry in charge of a media development. If a committee is needed to implement a media development fund, the Constitution had already provided for one.
It would appear to me that there could be no mistake about the clear lines which the Constitution has drawn across certain boundaries. It is to make sure that we are all singing from the same hymn sheet that the minutes of all meetings on the fund must be published. Firstly, we need to know how the setting up of the fund was justified; we need to know what the fund was intended to achieve. We also need to know how “media development” was defined. It is only through such factual analysis that we will know how this whole brouhaha began and whose definition of “media development” is limited mostly to buying and distributing laptops. This should not be a matter of NDC and NPP; it is for all of us to know the truth and learn from mistakes—if any have been made. This is the Mandela way forward.
gapenteng@outlook.com
The writer is a member of the National Media Commission