“It’s Alright If The Gov’t Sponsored Anas’ Work” – Prof Karikari

The Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa, Prof Kwame Karikari sees no breach in the case of the government funding the works of ace investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas.

A Deputy Information Minister yesterday revealed that government did sponsor two of Anas’ work even though a deputy Minister of Finance, Fifii Kwetey had earlier denied.

In a statement, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said that the two recent investigative pieces by Anas; namely the cocoa smuggling report and the latest on happenings at the Tema Port were funded by a State institution.

Even though it fell short of disclosing which institution it was that sponsored, the statement indicated that the principle behind funding of the two projects was to employ counter-check measures in order to assess whether or not existing systems put in place are yielding the required results.

This has raised eyebrows, making some question the authenticity of a journalist’s work if it should be sponsored by a government; especially when reporting is expected to be an objective exercise.

However, Prof Karikari speaking on the Big Bite show on Xfm 95.1, a privately owned commercial radio station in Accra, said there remains absolutely nothing wrong if government should fund the works of journalists once it is in the interest of the public.

“Anas exposed corruption at a very strategic institution in the country’s revenue collection; is that in the country’s interest or not? If it was the government that supported Anas to do it, I do not have any problem with that.” “The constitution also enjoins the media to seek accountability of public office holders. Now we do know that certain kinds of investigative reporting can be very expensive, so if government comes out to say that ‘I am giving that newspaper, radio or TV station money to undertake an exercise, that would be in the public’s interest, and which is also in accordance to supporting the media to seek accountability from public officials”.

He adds that he would hold a different view altogether if the government will sponsor an individual or a media house “to do things that go against the right of certain individuals or groups”.

When prompted that it was the job of the security agencies to fight corruption, Prof Karikari intimated that if government is using a private individual, then it means it has lost trust in its security agencies.

“If government bypassed the security officials and asked a journalist to do work that has to be done by them, then it means that government does not have trust in the security officials, or it has suspicions that the security officials may be in collusion with the perpetrators of that crime; so government will want to seek some other inventions with are independent of these security agencies”.