The Editor of the Accra Daily Mail, Haruna Atta, has refused to render an apology to the general public and journalists for his inability to substantiate a rumour he repeatedly published on an alleged $125,000 bribe.

The Ethics Committee of the Ghana Journalists Association, which gave the directive last Friday, said ''it is unacceptable that he has held the public in suspense since October 2002, giving serious doubts about the integrity of Ghanaian journalists''.

But Mr Haruna Atta told the ''Daily Dispatch'' in an interview that ''I am treating it with the contempt it deserves because these people are inured in provincialism and cannot even understand modern techniques of communication. The same people who did not understand what a poodle meant as a figure of speech and rushed to ask another newspaper to retract and apologise. Rightly the paper treated them with contempt and said no and finally, if they are not careful, this provincialism is going to lose them total respect. And even if their call for apologies are genuine, they will still be treated with contempt''.

The Accra Daily Mail last year published a story alleging that an Editor of a private newspaper had received $125,000 bribe. Although he did not mentioned names, Kwesi Pratt Jnr, Editor of the Insight newspaper’s name came up during a discussion among Editors of some private newspapers on JOY FM’s Newsfile programme.

The Ethics Committee of the GJA invited Mr Haruna Atta on the matter during which he promised to publish the details of the story when investigations are complete. However, after waiting for several months with no further publication, the Committee concluded that the story lacked substance.