NMC confirms receipt of government petition on "Castle Milia" documentary

General News of Friday, March 15, 2019

Source: Graphic.com.gh

2019-03-15

The National Media Commission (NMC) has confirmed that it has received a petition from the government on the documentary "Castle Milia" produced by the group Multimedia and Manbadeh Azure, the group's investigative journalist.

NMC President Yaw Boadu-Ayeboafoh, who confirmed this yesterday to the Accra Daily Graphic, said that, in accordance with the NMC's mandate, the government's complaints would be forwarded to Multimedia Group and Azuri. "and that they will have seven days to answer."

He further explained that, upon receipt of the responses to the complaints, the CNG should forward them to the complainants, "and that, if they find the explanations satisfactory, the case will end there".

However, he said, if the complainant insisted that the case be investigated, the CNG would set a date for the hearing and provide preliminary comments on the case. way forward.

"In the current state of things, we strictly follow established procedures, because we do not want to prejudice the case in favor of one party to another, so we will wait until we have exhausted the process", did he declare.

The petition

The petition, dated March 13, 2019 and signed by the Minister of Information, Mr. Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, was addressed to the President of the NMC.

He said: "Respectfully, the Government of Ghana files this complaint under Section 167 (b) of the 1992 Constitution and Article 2 (1) (b) of the National Commission Act, 1993. the media (Law No. 449). invites you to investigate the publication, subject of the complaint.

"Specifically, the disputed publication is a Joy News documentary entitled" The Militia in the Heart of the Nation ", which aired in the evening of Thursday, March 7, 2019, in the evening.

Subsequently, parts of the documentary were broadcast on Joy FM, Adom FM, Asempa FM and the various subsidiaries of Joy FM, Adom FM and Asempa FM at various times in the country.

The documentary was prepared by Manbadeh Awuni Azure, a journalist with Multimedia Broadcasting Company Limited (Multimedia). "

Landforms

"In accordance with Article 15 of Law 449, we kindly ask you to obtain the following reliefs: the first; a statement that the documentary contested by Azure and Joy News is misleading and constitutes a dishonest and deliberate statement of fact and is designed to cause unjustified public apprehension, alarm and panic; secondly, an order of retraction and apologies to the Government of Ghana on the content of the said documentary mentioned above, and finally other disciplinary measures that your commission might seem to respect, "he said.

Reasoning

Explaining the reason for the government's action, the petition says: "We are filing this complaint because the substance of the story denounced is fundamentally false, it is the product of blatant false statements of facts, of wild speculations from the producer of the specified documentary on it and even betrays a desperate attempt on the part of Multimedia and Awuni to denigrate the sincere efforts of the President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, aiming to put an end to the disturbing phenomenon of political vigilance in the country. "

Supporting the petition with its own evidence, including excerpts from the documentary on various media platforms inside and outside the country, the petition said: "The documentary deliberately omitted from 39, state the material fact that the Secretariat of the National Security Council had closed the alleged office of the company since October 2018.

"Indeed, at the date of publication of the documentary in March 2019, there was no activity of any kind whatsoever on the part of the company at the castle.

At the time of the broadcast of the documentary, Multimedia broadcast it to give the public the false impression that such an activity was going on in the premises of Osu Castle.

"The evil at the time of the broadcast was to scramble the cards at the same time as the president was taking steps to sanitize the political environment of all acts of" vigilance ".

He stated that the claim that the castle, Osu, would be an annex to the presidency, used as a "security zone" to train militias and self-defense groups, was a first-rate sensationalism .

The facts showed that since March 2017, Osu Castle had not been a "security zone" nor an annex of the presidency, he added.

He added that the castle was a facility managed by the Museums and Monuments Commission, after President Akufo-Addo appointed the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture on March 5, 2017 to lead its transformation into Museum.

Manbadeh's answer

Meanwhile, at the time of going to press, Azuri had informed the Daily Graphic that he had still not received a copy of the complainant's request and had pledged to provide the newspaper with any information from this guy as soon as he would have received a copy.