Let’s have a civil society: GJA,NMC, the Police and society in general.

Many societies have their own ways of disseminating information to its constituents. The same way Ghana has her own way of sharing information. There are times that for the sake of privacy, security and respect, some pieces of information are withheld. In this modern age and with information technology which makes the sharing of news rapid, the need to protect information has become paramount to prevent information reaching the wrong audience.

I have been moved to write this piece not necessarily because of the information that appear on various websites of the Ghanaian media, but the graphics that accompany these news items.

The pictures of dead accident victims littering our roads are shown without any iota of respect to the dead victims. The last time it was a decapitated person lying on a train track in Takoradi, another time it was murder/suicide of two soldiers at Michel camp, another time it is the body of a woman who refused sex to her husband, the police guns down armed robbers and their dead bodies in pools of blood and so on and so forth. The images are legion to be recounted here.

What have we become as a society? What are the laws governing the showing of these pictures? Even if there are no laws what are the values that we stand for?

It is high time the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) rein in its members to be a little civil in their reportage. Such pictures even when taken should not be published in the papers or the internet. These pictures should be given to the authorities to be used in investigations. The National Media Commission should also sit up and look into this practice of violating people privacy by showing their dead bodies on the web.

Do we sit down to consider the effect this has on our children and the relatives of those dead people? We need to learn to be very slow in showing certain images or not show them at all. I do not even believe the victims’ families get to see these images first before it goes online. Let us respect each other.

Sometime last year, CNN chose to show dead bodies of the Kenyan mall attacks . Some of us ganged up and wrote to the CNN since they do not show such images in the USA . It appears by continually showing such images; we are directly telling other news outlets that it is okay to show such images. It is another way of telling some of us to stop confronting those international news outlets that show images of dead people in our society.

Civilization does not only mean having beautiful architecture, literature, and politics, but having values that respect individual rights even in death. We can be poor but civil. We do not need to out do each other with these graphic images of our own dead people. If there are no laws governing these exposures, let us resolve as a country, to put a stop to this practice.

Vincent Kosi

Silver Spring MD