Mr Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, Minister of Information, has urged political communicators to be sincere in their communications about governance to help safeguard and uphold the nation’s democracy.
‘Communicators of governance should always be sincere because we live in the post-truth era where faith in political leaders has been eroded. And we must make extra effort to be sincere at all times. I admit sometimes we may get things wrong based on the briefs that we have been given, but we should never deliberately go out there to mislead the public.’ Mr Nkrumah said.
The Minister was delivering a public lecture he delivered on the topic: ‘A Legal Framework for Communicating Governance’ organised by the Faculty of Law of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA).
Mr Nkrumah said the charges that political actors throw at each other should not be full of lies and concoctions, but genuine and fair and based on the truth.
‘For political and civil society actors, we should bear in mind that if we keep investing so much in undermining each other’s sincerity, then we should not be surprised if the public forms the view that all of us are insincere,’ he said.
He expressed worry about the increasing rates of misinformation and disinformation, saying they possessed the potential to collapse Ghana’s democracy.
He said it was worrying that the media increasingly fell prey to misinformation whilst some political actors felt guilty of disinformation.
‘We should also encourage the mainstream media to focus more on unearthing the facts for the public to make up their own minds, and less on personal opinions and commentary,’ the Minister advised.
Source: Ghana News Agency