Gyan-Apenteng wants Broadcasting Bill passed

A renowned journalist, Nana Kwasi Gyan-Apenteng, has deplored the long delay in the passage of the Broadcasting Law.

He said there was no justification that 20 years after the process to have a new broadcasting law began, nothing positive had come out of it.

That development, he said, had created the loophole for the proliferation of the airspace with a host of media houses which were promoting their own agendas.

Nana Gyan-Apenteng, who is also the immediate past Chairman of the National Media Commission (NMC), expressed the sentiments when he was hosted on a show dubbed: MTN Bright Conversation, which coincided with his 70th birthday.

The conversation was on the theme: “Nana Kwasi Gyan-Appenteng @70: Reflections on the media as a lived experience”.

The MTN Bright Conversation, which has been in existence since 2018, celebrates people who have lived lives worthy of emulation by the public, especially the youth.

Comparing the media space of today with that of yester year, the veteran journalist said currently, Ghana had achieved quantity in the media space but lacked quality in their broadcasting, a situation which used to be the reverse in his days.

Harmonisation of laws

While calling for the harmonisation of laws that governed the airspace, Nana Gyan-Apenteng said the state needed to work on that, as the NMC could not handle it alone.

Speaking on a wide range of issues, the former NMC chairman, who shared a lot of his life’s experiences, said the time had come for Ghana to have a holistic discussion on what the media space, especially broadcasting, needed to do.

Nana Gyan-Apenteng, who, from his life’s experience, served as one of the shortest-serving newspaper editors, having done that for just six hours for a private newspaper, said it was the duty of the state to protect all, especially the gullible, including children, from falling prey to the antics of occultists, magicians and fake spiritualists who dominated the air space.

He noted that the recent Kasoa ritual murder had thrown the spotlight on the NMC in the media space and called for a national discourse on the way forward.

He said something good must come out of the Kasoa incident, with regard to how to regulate the media space.

On that score, he recommended that the country must come together to discuss the kind of media that was needed.

Resourcing NMC

Nana Gyan-Apenteng said the NMC, which is made up of people from different shades of society, was under-resourced, with no operational funds to work with.

Consequently, he recommended a smaller group that would be well resourced to do the work.

He advised up-and-coming journalists to desist from the use of their mobile phones to record, instead of the notebook.

He called on journalists to be more adventurous and curious in order to bring out the facts and not become just copy writers.

Regulation of media space

The Chairman for the occasion, Professor Kwame Karikari, in a submission, commended Nana Gyan-Appenteng for his work in shaping the media space during his active service days.

Prof. Karikari, who is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL), reiterated the call for the regulation of the media space.

“Freedom of the press is so that the press will be free to keep the government on its toes,” he added.

Comparing journalism today with what happened in the early 1970s and 1980s, he said technology was providing all the opportunities for journalism to thrive.

Therefore, he called on journalists to take advantage of that space to do the right things.

Prof. Karikari called on television stations to be creative, insisting that they were not as creative as they needed to be, although they had all the technology at their disposal.

He called on people to make reading a second nature to broaden their horizon.