A security analyst, Mr Adam Bonaa has said Rambo-style of journalist should not be happening in a country being governed by a human right activist as president.
He described the way and manner the journalist with Citi FM was arrested by the Police on Tuesday May 11 as shameful.
Mr Bonaa told TV3’s Komla Adom on the Mid Day news on TV3 Wednesday May 12 that “This speaks to the core of our democracy. We cannot live in a country where you use sledge hammer to kill flies or insects.
“That is what is happening at the moment. Whoever deployed these supposedly called National Security operatives should bow down his or head in shame.
“The president is touted as a human rights lawyer and I called him lawyer president and so these things shouldn’t be happening. With internal security operations usually, you will use discretion, 99 per cent of it is discretion. The other part of it, which will be part of the 99 per cent will be commonsense.
For his part, private legal practitioner Sampson Lardi Anyenini stated that Ghana’s courts have recently ruled that journalist should use straightforward means to obtain their information to feed the public.
However, he said, where the journalists being frustrated, they are allowed to use other means to obtain the facts that are in the public interest.
The reigning journalist of the year told TV3’s Komla Adom in an interview on the Mid day news Wednesday May 12 regarding persons who are asking why the Citi FM journalist Caleb Kudah went filming at a security zone, a situation that led to his arrest.
He said “Our laws say nothing is a crime or nothing is an offence unless it has been prescribed in law and the punishment for it has been so defined in written law. So, if you say you have written somewhere on your wall that this place is a security zone , you don’t take photographs, you must show me which law gives you the power to say what you are saying. If you don’t show me a law I am not under any obligation to obey it.
‘I am not saying that the journalists can go and walk into any meeting and begin to record it without permission.
“Our laws and courts have ruled in recent times that journalists should use straight forward means to secure the information they will need. But where they are being frustrated the use of the straightforward means they are allowed to use other means to procure the information which is for the public interest.”
By Laud Nartey|3news.com|Ghana