A Deputy Information Minister, Baba Jamal, has said Government will not waste resources on journalists to do what he calls “dirty work” for the Government.
Mr. Jamal said this in an interview with Shamima Muslim, Host of Eyewitness News on Citi FM, where he denied reports that he had held a secret meeting with a group of journalists in the Upper East Regional capital Bolgatanga, with a promise to put them on Government payroll.
In an audio tape making rounds in the media, the Deputy Minister is purpotedly heard wooing the said journalists with cash to pursue the agenda of the Mills-led administration.
The audio tape, purportedly captured Baba Jamal, promising the journalists huge sums of money should they dance to the tune of government.
He was heard saying that government had decided to use funds from the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) to pay those journalists.
The motive is to keep Mills in power beyond 2012 by refusing to publish any articles that could bring down the government ahead of the 2012 elections.
Mr. Baba Jamal is reported to have told the beneficiaries that they would be given official appointment letters from NYEP so that bank accounts could be opened for them for the unspecified monthly stipend to be transferred into them.
Mr. Jamal has however told Citi News there has not been any meeting of that sort.
Although he conceded attending to his official government duty in Bolgatanga where he held a press conference with journalists there, he stated clearly that at no point did he utter the words that have been attributed to him in the tape.
“Let me say categorically that there has never been any secret meeting between me and a group of journalists to promise them anything. That voice that they are playing is either a fabrication or somebody mimicking my voice or its computer manipulation. And I challenge them to come out with that person who said that he was part of that meeting where he recorded me. He should come and mention the names of the people who were at that secret meeting. The meeting I had in Bolgatanga was an open meeting where all journalists were invited with cameras and some of the pictures were shown on national TV. So anybody who is making the claim should own up and tell me who were at that meeting”.
“Clearly somebody is trying to mimic somebody and this shows you the desperation of some people. I don’t know who it is for now. I had information of this some three or four days ago, that some people are trying to deal with me because they say that I am gaining credibility since I came to the Ministry of Information. I am yet to know those people who want to do that. And we also had information that people are using computers to mimic people’s voice. So I am not surprised although I didn’t know I am going to be the first person they will try this trick on. Let whoever says he recorded me be bold enough to come out and say I recorded you” he said.
Mr. Jamal, who is purportedly heard on the tape saying that the NDC administration was not the first to pay journalists to push Government agenda, told Citi FM on Wednesday August 3, that the NDC party has never recruited journalists who are in cahoots with the party to do its bidding.
“There may be some journalists who may have their own sympathies with the party. But there has never been any process to select journalists purposely to come and support our party” he noted.
Asked how the party rewards journalists who openly show sympathy towards the Government, Mr. Jamal said he was unaware of that practice.
“If anybody is doing that, Baba Jamal has never been part of any exercise to recruit or reward any journalist to favour Government. This Government has no such policy. We are focused on delivering on the better Ghana agenda and we count on the good people of Ghana to find favour with us and vote for us and not to use any journalists to do any dirty work for us” he noted.
By: Citifmonline.com/Ghana
Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites