GBC to set up election monitoring c’ttee

Page 16, Jan 10, 2008
Story: Emmanuel Adu-Gyamerah
THE Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) is setting up an election monitoring committee to monitor the fairness of the corporation’s coverage to all political parties towards the 2008 general election.
“An election monitoring and complaints committee will be set up to monitor the fairness of GBC to all political parties on a continuous basis, receive complaints and resolve them peacefully,” the Director-General of the GBC, Mr William Ampem-Darko, gave the hint in Accra on Sunday.
He said that the corporation planned to meet representatives of the various political parties to plan the ground rules of the coverage of the elections.
Mr Ampem-Darko was speaking at a church service at the Kaneshie Presbyterian Church during which he was inducted into office with his deputy, Mr Kwabena Sarpong-Anane.
He said as a public broadcaster, GBC would ensure that it followed the guidelines for political broadcast published by the National Media Commission (NMC), best practices from elsewhere and common sense during and after the election.
Mr Ampem-Darko said that though the proliferation of radio and television channels was healthy for the country’s democracy, it was now difficult to monitor the NMC guidelines on political broadcast and broadcast standards in general.
“I hope the independent broadcasters too will apply the Guidelines on Political Broadcast and common sense as we plan to do at GBC for peace in Ghana before, during and after election 2008,” he stated.
The director-general added that the corporation started broadcasting peace messages from respectable personalities from January 1, 2008, adding that that would continue until December 31, 2008.
In a sermon, the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, Right Reverend Dr Yaw Frimpong-Manso, urged the director-general and his deputy to turn GBC around to be a pathfinder and leader in the communication industry.
“You have the task of making the GBC to provide a fair and balanced reportage of all political activities in this election year,” he said.
He said the country needed to have a proper, well-researched and investigated information on issues from cities and rural areas, he said, adding that the corporation had the greatest challenge of weeding out bad programmes such as nudity, sex and pornography and all kinds of local and foreign films portraying sex and armed robbery.
Rt. Rev. Dr Frimpong-Manso expressed the hope that the current leadership of the GBC would transform the corporation to meet the challenges of the country’s contemporary situation in order to fulfil national aspirations of having quality, educative and sound moral, socio-economic, political and religious programmes.
In a message, the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mr Joe Ghartey, admonished Ghanaians and said that the government would not do anything that would mar the 2008 elections.
“Ghanaians will not want the peace they are enjoying to be disturbed,” he said and, therefore, called on them to condemn people who were bent on taking the law into their own hands.