ATWAG needs to sensitize bloggers - Kwesi Ernest

Kwesi Ernest, Chief Executive Officer of Media Excel has opined that the Arts and Tourism Writers’ Association of Ghana (ATWAG) should sensitize bloggers on the type of content that they put out.

In an interview with Dr. Cann on Happy FM’s Saturday edutainment talk show Showbiz Xtra, he expressed concern about the negative headlines that bloggers put out about people, saying that it has a greater impact on them than people realize.

Talking of negative impact, he shared his personal experience from when Randy Nunoo accused him of taking bribe to defend Kojo Antwi’s administration, and when a blogger put out a news story of Joyce Blessing accusing him of being a thief.

He narrated, “One time, I wanted to travel so I went to the Danish embassy to apply for a visa and you know that in this age, everything is online so as I was being interviewed, the woman was cross-checking my information on the internet and she just asked me if it’s true that I accept bribe.

I had to take my time to explain to her that it’s a media fight and sometimes people just do things to discredit your image but she still wasn’t convinced and this is what negative publicity can do to us. Know that when you put something on the internet, you can never scrape it off totally”.

Kwesi continued that he finally sorted the issue but it did not end there. He revealed that when he got to Canada, which has one of the toughest immigration systems, it became another bag of stress when the officer looked him up and saw the news headline of Joyce Blessing calling him a thief.

According to him, he sat at the immigration office for close to an hour after they had taken his passport just because they were looking deeper into his online profile and the one thing that saved him was a picture of himself and late President J.J Rawlings that they chanced upon. Even with that, he mentioned that he had to wait for another 20minutes to get his passport stamped before he was welcomed into Canada.

Kwesi Ernest in conclusion, advised that the ATWAG should sensitize writers and bloggers on the content that they put out so that they do not keep causing such harm to the personal lives of people.