Kumasi, June 2, GNA - Some Ghanaian journalists who on Wednesday trooped to the Baba Yara Sports Stadium, in Kumasi to cover a training session of the Senior National Team, the Black Stars, ahead of their African Nations Cup qualifier against Congo were disappointed as most of them were refused entry into the inner perimeter to enable them carry out their duties.
The journalists, including those from Daily Graphic, TV 3, TV Africa, Net 2, Fox FM, Freedom FM, amongst others, for about an hour kept pleading with the security men at the gate to allow them in to conduct interviews with the players and team officials but all fell on deaf ears.
"We have been instructed by some management members of the Stars not to allow any journalist into the inner perimeter", some security men at the gate told the disappointed journalists.
The action of the security thus infuriated the journalists as they could not come to terms as to how the same security men allowed foreign journalists into the inner perimeter without even looking at their faces. The disappointed journalists kept moving from one gate to the other until most of them left the Stadium and vowed to stay off the Stars' match and future assignments.
Dickson Peprah, a Sports Journalist of Kumasi-based Fox FM, remarked that it was high time 93our team officials treated local journalists with the respect deserved of them and shunned the discrimination in respect of international matches played on the Ghanaian soil."
Some of the journalists cited the difficulty and frustration they go through even in getting accreditation for such matches and appealed to the Ghana Football Association and the National Sports Authority to work harder to improve the situation since the media were indispensable in the development of football in the country.
Mr Opoku Afriyie, Team Manager of the Stars, expressed worry at the manner in which the journalists were left stranded and appealed to them to exercise restraint.
He attributed the unfortunate development to what he termed as a communication gap, saying the initial arrangement was that the journalists were supposed to have been allowed into the inner perimeter 15 minutes before the training so as to enable them have interviews with the officials and players.
"We are really sorry for what happened and hope this would not be repeated in future", he told the GNA Sports later in an interview.