The Pro-partisan radio stations, Power FM and Oman FM, and news website, Ghana web.com, have topped the chart of media ethics violations for the period of October 1-15.
Pro-NDC’s Power FM led with 54 violations, followed by Ghanaweb.com with 45 violations. Pro-NPP’s Oman FM emerged as the third-worst perpetrator with 34 violations.
This was observed by the Ethics Monitoring Project of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) which monitored 26 news organisations made up of 10 Akan language radio stations, 10 newspapers and six news websites. The monitoring for the period saw a total of 966 pieces of content from the 26 media organisations under analysis out of which 151 ethical violations were recorded.
The report also observed that most of the ethical violations were monitored on radio. Radio stations recorded 103 out of the 150 violations observed for the period of monitoring. This was followed by news websites with 47 incidents. Newspapers recorded the remaining one (1) ethical violation.
Specifically, on radio, Pro-NDC radio station, Power FM’s afternoon political talk show, Inside Politics, which is hosted by Mugabe Maase, recorded the highest number of violations (30) during the period of monitoring. This was followed by Pro-NPP Oman FM’s evening show, Boiling Point (21) hosted by Kwabena Kwakye and the station’s morning political talk show, National Agenda (9) which is hosted by Yaw Amofa. Again, Pro NDC Power FM’s Battleground political show recorded (9) violations whilst its breakfast show-Dwaboase and Evening news recorded (8) violations each. Accra FM’s political talk show, hosted by Bobie Ansah recorded five violations.
The monitoring of media ethics is part of a project titled: Enhancing media professionalism to inspire public confidence and support for press freedom in Ghana being implemented with funding support from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The objective of the project is to identify and highlight incidents of ethical infractions and draw attention to such breaches as a way of fostering adherence to ethical principles by media organisations.
The full report contains the specific ethical principles violated, the names of the media outlets that committed the violations, among other findings.
Click here to access the full report. The instrument being used for the monitoring, which contains the category definitions for tracking and reporting of ethical principles is also available here
