Rwanda Media Commission commends Ghana
The Rwanda Media Commission (RMC) says that Ghana has a good model of media governance. This was made known during a courtesy visit by a delegation from the Rwandan Media Commission (RMC) to the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL) in Accra recently.
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Speaking on behalf of the delegates, Prince Bahati, commissioner of the RMC, said Ghana had the rules of good media governance and had found its model worthy to be emulated.
“Rwanda has learnt a lot; we now think more about free speech and are trying to build a nation with new values, of equal opportunities, a nation that cuts across religion and ethnicity. Everyone fears what has become known as ‘the genocide ideology’; so we are against anything that would divide us as a people,” Prince Bahati said.
The delegates wanted to find out if advertising cost affected local businesses, how the company handled diversity and if opportunities were given to divergent opinions because these have been major challenges in Rwanda.
In discussing its operations, the Managing Director of the Graphic Communications Group limited, Mr Kenneth Ashigbey, said Graphic was state-owned and was independent from individual and government control.
Mr Ashigbey observed that some of the problems included the operational challenges of equal coverage to the political parties during elections and the challenge of radio reviews and expressed the hope that the Media Commission would help deal with it.
Mr Yaw Boadu Ayeboafoh, Director, Newspapers of GCGL, added that with self-regulation, journalistic standards and practices could be applied. In addition, he said, “there were guidelines to writing on topics such as gender, religion, etc., internally.”
Present at the meeting were Mr Ransford Tetteh, Editor of the Daily Graphic and other editors from the Graphic Showbiz, the Mirror, and Junior Graphic. Also present were Mr Kirenga A. Clement, Rwanda National Programme Manager of Democratic Governance and Muayo Raphael, a commissioner at Rwanda Media Commission.
