The Defence Minister, Lt. General Joseph Henry Smith, has in a passionate plea, asked the Ghanaian media "not to introduce politics into the daily routines and activities of the Armed Forces."

If not, he warned, " ... you would end up destroying our noble profession," adding that he would rather the media saw the army "as the institution that exists to protect the interest of all Ghanaians irrespective of religion, political leaning, gender and so on."

"You are all aware of what politics has done to the military in the sub-region and the consequences thereof for those countries," the minister declared at a meeting with Senior Editors and journalists at the Burma Camp in Accra.

Surely, the military has not been left out of the political game playing in the country's highly politicized media landscape, and particularly the private media, depending on which side of the political divide they identify with, have often found political angles for stories regarding the army.

This, the minister noted, does not auger well for an institution with a collective, rather than a sectional mandate.

The minister and the Military High Command also expressed worry over what they termed the leakage of classified national security information in the media, which they say has the potential to jeopardize the nation's security.

The Defense Minister and the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Major General Peter Augustine Blay spent a great deal of time reminding the media of their role in maintaining the nation's security. As such they advised that media persons should spend some time to know the truth about issues in the military and determine whether publishing such stories would not endanger national security.

The minister said some publications on the military in the last few months have not gone down well with his outfit in view of the dire implications - local and international they could have on national security. "There is no doubt that some of the information you put out may provide intelligence to foreign agencies and therefore we appeal to you, as it were, to do some due diligence on such information before putting them into the public domain."

Ghana's image, he noted as country hailed for its international peacekeeping efforts, needs to be protected if the country is to continue to participate in such operations.

But a question the minister's concerns raise is what constitutes a matter of national security as against the media's freedom to operate as well as its responsibility to expose what it deems wrong in the military or any other institution for that matter.

Certainly, journalists would not like to be gagged in the performance of their duty but they also have a responsibility not to act in a way as to jeopardize the security of the state.

If that is the case, should there be in place clear cut rules of engagement? The Executive Secretary of the National Media Commission Mr. George Sarpong thinks so. Reacting to the minister's concerns, the legal luminary called for laws that would state in clear terms the no go areas for the media in terms of their reportage on the military.

To this, the Defence Minister added his voice saying that what the country actually need is a Defence Policy.



Source Public Agenda/Ghana