CALL FOR PROPER RECORD KEEPING (PAGE 29)

THE Executive Director of Media Foundation for West Africa, Professor Kwame Karikari, has called for efficient record keeping and accurate reportage to ensure that generations unborn are not deprived of facts of events of today, which would be tomorrow’s history.
He said findings had shown that about 95 per cent of records about events in Africa could only be found outside the continent of Africa.
He was speaking at a workshop organised by the coalition on the advocacy to the Right to Information Bill, which is currently before Parliament.
“The stories of Baba Yara and Ohene Gyan and other great sportsmen after whom various sports facilities across the country were named and their photographs are nowhere to be found,” he said, adding that “such development tells how bad we are when it comes to record keeping”.
He gave an example of the United States of America where the first posters printed by political parties for their campaign could be found “but from the ‘50s it would be difficult to have such records in Ghana.”
Prof. Karikari reminded the media that in their quest to disseminate information they should be guided by accurate and balanced information to ensure that, in the future, what the generations unborn would be reading would reflect exactly what transpired today.
He said it was very important for the citizenry to give their support to the passage of the bill before the house. The bill, he said, would pave the way for other agencies to be empowered for the benefit of the people especially the less privileged.
Nana Oye Lithur of the Commonwealth Initiative said international Human Rights Treaties on civil and political rights, Article 19 (2) (and with similar wording: Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) stated as follow:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
She said the proactive duty of citizens today was to request information held by public officers and that principle was recognised under the current bill which states that “one does not need to provide reasons for an application’’ in the Section 1 (4) of the Bill).
Nana Lithur said it was the state’s corresponding duty to provide information on its activities, and be proactive in public education and dissemination of information on a regular basis.
She said although freedom of expression and thought depended on the availability of adequate information, the right to personal safety required that people were informed about security threats to enable them to be active partners.
The bill, she said, would reduce conflict and promote national cohesion, as greater openness brought with it more public trust in the representatives and made resistance and conflict over government policies less likely, where people would hold their government accountable, with feelings of powerlessness and alienation reduced.
The vice-president of the Ghana Journalists Association, Mr Affail Monney, said information is the lifeblood, raw material and stock in trade without which the media could not be in business.
He said even though Ghana’s level of press freedom struck chords of appreciation nationally and internationally, “however, what is missing is the right to information bill.”
Mr Monney said it was about time the media used their influence in the policy landscape to educate and fast track the passage of the bill. “The Right To Information Bill has been in the fridge for far too long,” he said.