MFWA to monitor coverage of campaign language

Press statement: MFWA to monitor coverage of campaign language

The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), supported by STAR-Ghana, will on February 14 & 15, 2012 bring together Ghanaian language experts to design a research instrument to monitor how radio stations use language in their coverage of the 2012 general elections.

The experts will develop guidelines for monitoring language use in campaign-related publications, broadcasts and programmes on strategically selected radio stations in major towns and cities in the country.

The MFWA will monitor the radio stations to identify how well or how poorly language is used in the media to promote peaceful environment for the elections. The organization will publish the findings regularly to, hopefully, to encourage parties and media to minimize acrimony and concentrate on issues in the campaigns.

The forum is part of MFWA’s Election Project in Ghana for 2012. It is under the theme “Using Media to Promote Peaceful Elections through Decent Language Campaigning.” It will be attended by representatives of political parties and media managers.

In recent times there has been a worrying trend of the use of indecent and violent language in the media by politicians, and also by media practitioners. The media have become platforms for speech inciting divisiveness, baseless acrimony, insult and the spread of falsehood. This spate of unethical and unprofessional language use in the media can promote harmful developments in periods of national excitement, such as during the forthcoming December, 2012 elections.

After two decades of the repeal of the newspaper licensing law, the liberalisation of the airwaves and the repeal of the Criminal Libel Law, Ghana has developed an open society of free speech and press freedom. While the situation is important for the country’s democratic development, it can also pose challenges to the building of a culture of democracy.

The objectives of the MFWA’s project are to enhance peaceful 2012 elections in Ghana and improve the standards of media coverage of elections.

The MFWA is a regional independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization based in Accra. It was founded in 1997 to defend and promote the rights and freedom of the media and all forms of expression.