News website Ghanaweb.com recorded more than 50% of the media ethics violations recorded for the period of February 1-15. The violations recorded on the popular news website were mostly unsavory and unprintable comments by readers of the online portal which the editors have allowed to be published.
Ghanaweb.com recorded 58 violations out of the 108 violations recorded for the period of monitoring. The violation recorded for the period represents exactly a 100% increase compared with the previous period of monitoring, January 16-31, where 54 violations were recorded.
These findings were observed by the Ethics Monitoring Project of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) which monitored 26 news organisations made up of 10 Akan language radio stations, 10 newspapers, and six news websites. A total of 980 pieces of content from the 26 organisations were monitored and analysed out of which 108 ethical violations were recorded.
Aside from Ghanaweb.com which recorded 58 violations, modernghana.com also recorded 1 violation, making news websites the media outlet that infracted media ethics the most for the period of monitoring. Radio stations followed with 49 violations. The newspapers monitored did not record any violation for the period.
The monitoring of media ethics is part of a project titled: Enhancing Media Professionalism To Inspire Public Confidence and Support for Press Freedom in Ghana being implemented with funding support from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The objective of the project is to identify and highlight incidents of ethical infractions and draw attention to such breaches as a way of fostering adherence to ethical principles by media organisations.
The full report contains the specific ethical principles violated, the names of the media outlets that committed the violations, among other findings. Click here to access the full report. The instrument being used for the monitoring, which contains the category definitions for tracking and reporting of ethical principles is also available here.
For further clarifications and media interviews, contact the Programme Manager, Abigail Larbi-Odei (0244867047), or Programme Officer, Kwaku Krobea Asante (0249484528).