…Over Concocted Story

… Concerns Heighten Over Lowering Standards

Whilst the Editor of the New Punch newspaper, Ebenezer Ato Sam, a.k.a. Baby Ansabah, was busily purging his conscience over concocted stories against the current president, Joy FM, a popular radio station in reporting his story, ended up concocting their own story about the current vice President.

The usually genteel and media shy Vice President John Dramani Mahama, is said to be fuming with rage at Joy FM, for concocting such a terrible story about him.

The Joy FM story implied that Baby Ansabah, Editor of The New Punch newspaper was under pressure to make confessions about concocted stories he published against President John Evans Atta Mills, because he is acting under a spell of blackmail from a monetary payment he received from the Vice President.

Meanwhile, sources within Joy Fm’s newsroom have told The Enquirer that the initial storyline was that the government paid the editor to go on several radio stations with his confessions and again paid Metro TV to allow him to appear on their current affairs programme to repeat the allegations.

The Joy FM sources said, when they contacted the host of the Good Evening Ghana Programme, he debunked the story and stated that the decision to bring Mr. Ansabah on the TV programme was made by the producer of the show and that the allegation was too wild.

The Joy FM sources continued that when that leg of the story collapsed, another allegation surfaced immediately, which was that the Vice President had, as a condition for paying monies to Baby Ansabah, requested him to make certain confessions.

“Even that allegation too, was shot down by family members of the late pastor, who told us that they had not received any payment from Mr. Ansabah. In the absence of evidence that the Veep paid any money to Ansabah, there was no story. But my people went ahead and run the story against the Veep,” revealed the newsroom source.

Reacting to the Joy FM blackmail news story, the Office of the Vice President has described as “highly irresponsible another deliberate attempt to malign the Vice President, John Mahama, the Mills administration and the ruling NDC.”

The statement signed by John Abdulai Jinapor, Media Co-ordinator to the Vice President, said the JoyFM news report can, at best, be described as a “fabrication calculated to impugn the reputation of the Vice President.”

The statement said, Joy FM in its report claimed, among others, that it had been able to confirm that the Vice President assisted the said Baby Ansabah with money to pay compensation to the family of a pastor he allegedly knocked down in a motor accident. The statement says the report also falsely claimed that officials of the NDC used that assistance to blackmail Mr. Ansabah to avoid prosecution.

Mr. Janipor stated that neither has the Vice President given out any money to Mr. Ansabah nor has he coerced him to make any confession.

“Despite the clear denial by both a family representative of the deceased pastor and Mr. Ansabah that there has not been any such compensation paid, JoyFM claimed in its news report that it had gathered that as a fact and went ahead to broadcast the news item though it did not prove that so-called fact,” the Veep’s office stated.

The Office of the Vice President, in the statement said whilst the “Mills government believes in the freedom of the media and will continue to promote that, the media must desist from the deliberate peddling of falsehood and the fabrication of stories intended to malign personalities and institutions.”

The statement advised JoyFM, in particular, to remember the basics of journalism and endeavour to promote professionalism in the trade.

Meanwhile, there have been general concerns about falling standards at Joy FM, with others speculating that certain particular journalists at the station appear to have taken a negative political stance against the current government.

There are some media observers who also say the lowering of standards at the station could be attributable to the exit of key news anchors over the years.

These pundits say the station has not found fitting replacements for some of its key anchors, who include, Komla Durmor, Akwasi Sarpong, Sony Decker, Mawuko Zormelo, Stan Dogbe, and Paul Adom Otchere.