I could not help feeling sorry for Mother Ghana, when I recently heard calls from a number of practicing journalists that the bad nuts in the profession ought to be reined in, through controls of one kind or the other. Professor Kwame Karikari was the lone voice advocating leaving the status quo untouched. What is it, dear reader, which motivates those who think that we ought to busy ourselves with empowering tomorrow’s tyranny with the building-blocks, to enable such a regime muzzle the right to freedom of expression, of future generations of Ghanaians? Do they not understand that we are in the knowledge age – and that it is only those societies in which there is a free interchange of ideas, in which the leading-edge ideas will come to the fore: and help propel nations (like ours!) towards a prosperous future? Why should we not rather seek to create Africa's most liberal society in our country, and once again become a beacon for those of our fellow Africans who live under some of the most brutal dictatorships in the world – and inspire them to fight to create free societies too in their oppressed nations?
Should we not tolerate the transgressions of the unethical; the uncouth; the biased; the irresponsible; and the corrupt; in the profession, in exchange for continuing to enjoy the freedom to criticize and check those who lead our country: and make it impossible for tyranny to ever return to blight the lives of present and future generations of Ghanaians? Instead of wasting our energies thinking up clever ways to restrain the media, let us rather aim to make Ghana as free a society as the United States of America is, if not even more liberal than that bastion of freedom. It is shortsighted in the extreme to think that in the Internet age, anyone can effectively control free speech, anywhere on the surface of the planet Earth.
Can the criticism-averse and smug-geniuses amongst those who surround the president at the Osu Castle, for example, who loathe one simply because one dares expose them for the third-rate individuals they really are (who are only lucky to be at the seat of power on account of their being in the entourage of the presidential candidate of today's ruling party in Ghana, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), during the campaign for the December 2008 presidential elections!), ever stop an old and senile fool like me from speaking my mind online, even though they are having a stab at it as we speak? If they succeed in stopping me from blogging on the Internet from Ghana, for example, I shall simply relocate elsewhere! We must not let the sins of unprofessional journalists (those shameless and mostly amoral individuals, who have sold their consciences for a handsome profit to crooked politicians!), and a majority of whom have not even mastered the basic tool of their profession, the English language, to be ever used as an excuse to stop ordinary people from enjoying the right to express themselves freely, in newspapers and on the airwaves of the electronic media, in our homeland Ghana. Period. A word to the wise…
Tel (powered by Tigo the one mobile phone network in Ghana that actually works!): + 233 (0) 27 745 3109 & the not-so-hot and clueless Vodafone wireless smartfone: + 233 (0) 30 2976238.
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