{"id":3429,"date":"2019-07-28T16:43:41","date_gmt":"2019-07-28T16:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=3429"},"modified":"2019-10-26T18:28:46","modified_gmt":"2019-10-26T18:28:46","slug":"attacks-on-journalists-akufo-addos-record-similar-to-rawlings-haruna-attah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2019\/07\/28\/attacks-on-journalists-akufo-addos-record-similar-to-rawlings-haruna-attah\/","title":{"rendered":"Attacks on journalists: Akufo-Addo&#8217;s record similar to Rawlings&#8217; &#8211; Haruna Attah"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Veteran journalist, Abdul Raman Haruna Attah, wants President Akufo-Addo to break his silence on the increasing attack on journalists.<\/p>\n<p>This, according to the editor of the Accra Dail Mail, is because the record of his government rivals the era of former President Jerry John Rawlings\u2019 dark days.<\/p>\n<p>In a recent interview on Upfront on JoyNews TV, Alhaji Haruna Attah noted, the attacks on journalist \u201cwere things I didn&#8217;t expect would happen but I knew would happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy did Ayawaso West Wuogon happen? How come those thugs were to free their colleagues in Kumasi and the Attorney-General entered a case of nolle prosequi? The combination of all these things is big; so the record for me is not a glowing one,\u201d the former Ambassador to Namibia lamented.<\/p>\n<p>According to him, the deteriorating media freedom is evident with the closure of pro-opposition media houses -Radio Gold and XYZ- as well as the arrest of the ModernGhana employees.<\/p>\n<p>He believes a government should err more on the side of media protection than punishing it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEven if they [media houses] erred, they were providing a service which was not performed by many others&#8230;you close them down, you are denying some people alternative information,\u201d he told the host Raymond Acquah.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Haruna Attah is shocked at the loud silence of the Presidency after Prophet Owusu Bempah whom he said is President Akufo-Addo\u2019s spiritual guru, attacked Radio XYZ.<\/p>\n<p>He assessed, the various government\u2019s performance when it comes to media freedom and ease of practising journalism in the country.<\/p>\n<p><b>Media freedom and Presidency through the lens of Haruna Attah<\/b><\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor someone like me I still marvel that I got away with a lot of things under the Rawlings\u2019 regime because I ran a weekly \u2018Taking Issue\u2019 column in the \u2018Statesmen\u2019 where I was always taking on his regime.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cApart from them [government] sending me to Nsawam Prison on contempt charges, by and large, I got away with a lot,\u201d he recounted.<\/p>\n<p>Describing John Kufuor\u2019s time as the \u201cgolden years of modern Ghanaian journalism,\u2019 Mr Haruna Attah lauded the former president\u2019s move to abolish the criminal libel law in 2001 soon after coming into office.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHis body language was media-friendly and he preferred to err on the side of media freedom than chastising the media. The Gissele Yazji episode might have been terrible. No head of state could have slept over that but he went through it and no journalist was jailed or beaten,\u201d he observed.<\/p>\n<p>According to him, although he experienced death threats under that regime, he did not blame that on the institutions of the state.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XveL6lv0nR4\" width=\"600\" height=\"350\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><b>Golden era of Journalism in Ghana<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Mr Haruna Attah said the country experienced its golden days of journalism from the John Kufuor, John Mills to John Mahama era.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere was not much intimidation even though there were occasional explosions, in general, the body language of the three first gentlemen was one of friendliness,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The Mahama appointee described the incident of former president Mahama\u2019s aide, Stan Dogbe, smashing a reporter\u2019s recorder as one of the many \u2018lone-wolf\u2019 attacks.<\/p>\n<p>He said the development is still dogging Mr Mahama when the issue of media freedom comes up for discussion.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Haruna Attah said giving credit to President Akufo-Addo, then Attorney-General in the Kufuor regime, for the repeal of the criminal libel law is somehow erroneous because the buck stops with the president.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMinisters do not decide for the president. It is the president who decides and takes certain initiatives, so if Mr Kufour didn\u2019t agree to it there was no way it would have worked. He was approachable so we had the chance to interact with him and we saw where his mindset was,\u201d he recounted.<\/p>\n<p><b>Cynical about Akufo-Addo?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>The veteran journalist said he is the wrong person to evaluate the Presidency of Akufo-Addo for a simple reason.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t vote for him and I didn\u2019t expect much of him so my fears seem to be confirmed over and over,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Haruna Attah, who was the editor of the Statesman says, he feared the publisher\u2019s [Akufo-Addo] \u201cintolerant leadership\u201d because he knew and could tell he had a streak of intolerance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe intolerance I knew would affect his relationships with a lot of things, whether it was the relationship with people in so-called opposition, media or people he dislikes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The 70-year-old believes, with a lot of pressure and criticism of stifling media, the President may \u201csit up\u201d and be forced to do the right things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Veteran journalist, Abdul Raman Haruna Attah, wants President Akufo-Addo to break his silence on the increasing attack on journalists. This, according to the editor of the Accra Dail Mail, is because the record of his government rivals the era of former President Jerry John Rawlings\u2019 dark days. In a recent interview on Upfront on JoyNews [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":3430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43,1],"tags":[4553,13052,2508,6975,5304,11394,12868,7960,8924,9194,13305,7234,920,9567,11638,4028,192,4521,5918,2264,401,12234,11493,766,6638,4786,6030,8618,4331,10342,9974,130,7550,6864,9755,11011,5094,11973,4755,7574,3805,12896,8306,4197,2000,3291,9656,594],"class_list":["post-3429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-accra","tag-akufo","tag-alhaji","tag-arrest","tag-attack","tag-attacks","tag-ayawaso","tag-case","tag-chance","tag-charges","tag-contempt","tag-death","tag-episode","tag-explosions","tag-forced","tag-freedom","tag-ghana","tag-ghanaian","tag-gold","tag-government","tag-guru","tag-host","tag-interview","tag-john-kufuor","tag-john-mahama","tag-john-rawlings","tag-journalist","tag-kufour","tag-kumasi","tag-law","tag-leadership","tag-mahama","tag-marvel","tag-ministers","tag-namibia","tag-nsawam","tag-nsawam-prison","tag-one","tag-owusu-bempah","tag-presidency","tag-president","tag-president-mahama","tag-prison","tag-rawlings","tag-stan-dogbe","tag-veteran-journalist","tag-wolf","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}