Leave The Media Alone - Speaker

The Speaker of Parliament, Peter Ala Adjetey says the media should be left alone to do their work according to the dictates of the profession. He said the media would always pursue controversial and unusual issues and therefore sees nothing wrong with that, so far as they present both sides of a story.

The Speaker made the remark after the NPP MP Jaman, Mrs Anna Nyamekye told the House that Ghana Television’s coverage of the opening ceremony of Parliament yesterday was one-sided.

She said although the Speaker had ruled that the Minority Leader, Alban Bagbin should not have addressed or recognised the presence of strangers in the House, that aspect, which the Minority hailed was rather captured and screened by GTV. Mrs Nyamekye said the report did not show the aspect of the Speaker's ruling that the recognition was not right under the circumstances and, therefore had the potential of misinforming the public.

But Mr. Speaker responded by saying that Parliament could do nothing about the complaint because the media had right to choose what it considers news worthy. He said if something bizarre had happened during yesterday’s ceremony it would have been a major news item on BBC but because everything went successfully and peacefully the media did not see it as news worthy.