CHAPTER 10: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION(S) & RECOMMENDATIONS 199-208
3.5 Post-Independent Ghana and Press Laws
With Ghana attaining independence in 1957, several laws were promulgated during the Convention People‟s Party (CPP) era under Kwame Nkrumah‟s leadership to control communications. The passage of the Criminal Code Act 29, 1960 demanded that: “newspapers and other publications which had been indulging in the systematic publication of matters calculated to prejudice public order or safety” could only be published after they had been submitted to the authorities for scrutiny. This law enhanced the censoring of both local and foreign publications.
Films were previewed to regulate cinematography exhibitions under the Libraries Act 76 (1961).
The Newspaper Licensing Act (1963) was passed under which editors and publishers needed licenses subject to yearly renewal (Asante, 1996; Rockson, 1990:39-40; Gadzekpo, 1997:36-37).
After toppling Nkrumah‟s government in 1966, the National Liberation Council (NLC) assumed power and with most of the existing laws in place, several newspapers sprung up, allowing even those published by political opponents, thus making the press fairly free. However, it became an offense to air statements --- whether true or otherwise --- against the NLC government, police or the army under the Prohibition of Rumours Decree - NLCD 92. Two decrees made it impossible to sue the state-owned media and the State Publishing Corporation or their journalists for defamation without Attorney-General authorisation (Asante, 1996). The democratically elected government
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under the Third Republic, Dr. Busia, in 1970 abrogated the Newspaper Licensing Law but at the same time pushed out of office the editor of the Daily Graphic (Faringer, 1991:47).
The Newspaper Licensing Law 1989 (PNDC Law 211) was reintroduced along with a Legislative Instrument (L 11417), Newspaper Licensing Registration 1989, Section 1 (1) of Law 211; these are two laws that generated „private‟ discussions. The former stated that “[n]o person shall print, publish or circulate any newspaper except under and in accordance with a license granted to the publisher by the Information Secretary” (Rockson, 1990:44). The repeal of this law by President Jerry John Rawlings was effected just six months prior to the general elections in 1992 leading to the springing up of three dozen autonomous privately-owned newspapers (Temin and Smith, 2002:588; Hasty, 2005). The Fourth Republic Constitution of Ghana (1992) explicitly spells out the „Freedom and Independence of Media‟ under Chapter 12, Article 162 that states:
There shall be no impediments to the establishment of private press or media; and in particular there shall be no law requiring any person to obtain a license as a prerequisite to the establishment or operation of a newspaper; journal or other media for mass communication or information.
In other countries, political office holders to some extent tend to control the establishment and growth of newspapers and other journals through „special tax‟ levies which is expected to limit production and suffocate these papers to shut down business. On the extreme, the move also accrued marginal revenue for the British monarchy. For instance, the 1719 Stamp Act made it mandatory for editors of newspapers to pay a penny and a shilling for each sheet printed and published advert respectively (Thompson, 1995:68). However, in subsequent years, Ghana‟s transition into democracy made it necessary for some fairness in the regulation of the media. This ushered in the establishment of the NMC and the NCA by the Constitution as discussed above. In terms of mandate assignment difference, whereas NMC is mandated to regulate the registration of print media and publications, promote high journalistic standards and ensure freedom and independence of the mass media including broadcasting in the country, the NCA was established by a statute in 1996 and is responsible for broadcasting (radio and television) frequency spectrum management (Afrimap, 2007:7).
The NMC remains the highest media regulatory body in Ghana and it is a product of the Fourth Republican Constitution. Since the passage of the legislative instrument 1587 by Parliament
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of the Complaint Settlement Procedure of 1994, the NMC has settled several cases brought before it by aggrieved public officials, politicians, businesses and institutions, journalists and ordinary citizens (Media Monitor, 2004:4-5). However, despite the transition to democratic rule in 1992, the Constitution still held its provisions contained in the Criminal Libel Law which stifles press freedom and expression and hunted journalists, especially from the private press who were anti- government, for years till its abolition by parliament on 27 July, 2001 (Fobih, 2008; Arthur, 2010:210; Hasty 2005; Gyimah-Boadi and Brobbey, 2012:4-5). Writing on ways to ensure autonomy of a media regulator, Jane Duncan (2008:26-27) made reference to Deputy Chief Justice Pius Langa who identified that two major factors influence independence as “financial and administrative independence”. Duncan deduced from the above position that though a regulatory body should exist within a state, it should not exist within government if it to be independent. The body should be adequately resourced (financial independence) and it should exercise autonomy over the Constitutional mandate that established it (administrative independence). Membership tenure of the regulator should be clearly provided for so that removal can only be based on a member‟s non- performance. On Constitutional matters, parliament should play a role in recruiting and firing (institutional independence).
With Ghana‟s fourth republic being deemed as having offered the most liberalised landscape ever for the media, accessing information in government‟s custody has remained an obstacle and sometimes depends on the “whom you know” norm (AMB, 2011:17). Moreover, it is still unclear why Ghana‟s Freedom of Information Act Bill has been held in parliament since 2003 (Schiffrin, 2010) while the threat for one to be prosecuted with huge fines under civil defamation is still in the books under section 208 of the Criminal Code (1960) (AMB, 2011:14). From the African perspective, Kanyongolo (1996:2) observed:
[d]espite the shortcomings in enforcement, it is heartening to note that media freedom is granted Constitutional protection by 11 out of the 12 countries of the southern African region. But the extent of the protection in any particular country depends on whether its Constitution expressly provides for the freedom, whether it also separately provides for the right of access to information, and whether there is a restriction on the extent to which media freedom may be limited or derogated from on such grounds as national security.
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Furthermore, the Constitutions of countries like Uganda and Nigeria continues to include laws like libel, sedition and licensing requirements (Schiffrin, 2010:6). This is not entirely dissimilar to other international cases. In America for instance, the term „national interest‟ has been employed as a mechanism to regulate and stifle information flow in the name of protecting the security of the state (Wasserman and de Beer, 2005:45). Drawing the line between national interest and public interest, Wasserman and de Beer (2005:47) explained that the former is a „precautionary‟
mechanism that the government uses to manipulate and convince the media to get it to do its bidding whereas the latter is a „society representative notion‟ of the media that makes it solely duty-bound to provide first-hand unadulterated information to society to enable them informed choices politically.
In summation, it became apparent that countries are classified based on their constitutional guarantees or laws about press freedom, however, this has little impact in determining the actual media landscape. This is because most nations have constitutions or regulations that pay lip service to the principle of freedom of expression and of the press, but their practices normally are completely quite different (Nixon, 1960:17). From this position, an enlightened society should be sought, for through the formal education system to enable the citizenry that the fourth estate represent to monitor and question attempts by any entity, whether public or private, to apply unfriendly regulation to hamper its operations.