The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, has raised serious concerns over the impact of unregulated new media on the future of journalism in Ghana, calling on media practitioners, policymakers, and the public to take urgent action to preserve the integrity of the profession.
Speaking at a dinner during the 29th Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) Awards held at the Manhyia Palace on Saturday, November 8, Otumfuo highlighted the challenges posed by the rapid rise of digital platforms and unregulated media practices.
According to him, these trends not only threaten professional journalism but also carry implications for democracy, societal values, and national stability.
“There are wider issues, more profound in their implications for policymakers and consumers alike,” the Asantehene remarked.
“We must ask ourselves two key questions: How worried should we be about the potential hijacking of the media profession by professional hustlers, and can the nation afford a media operating without regard to the laws of the state?”
Otumfuo stressed that while freedom of expression remains a fundamental pillar of democracy, media operations cannot operate outside the framework of the law.
“Any form of media, new or old, operating without any form of legal constraint is potentially a direct threat to democracy,” he warned, adding that adherence to the rule of law must guide every sector, including journalism.
The Daily Searchlight respectfully pleads to disagree with the Asantehene. There is a reason why freedom of the media is enshrined in the 1992 Constitution; it is because this nation has suffered before under times when the media was ‘regulated’.
Whilst admitting that there are excesses in both ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ media, we believe that there are enough laws in the civil litigation space to check excesses, whilst the constitutional protections afforded by the 1992 Constitution for the National Media Commission also serve as check on media excesses.
We believe that the calls for ‘regulation’ are self-serving, and handing over regulation to political actors portend a far greater danger than any threats posed by the media, old and new, today.
We call on the so-called ‘well-meaning’ civil society voice charging the space with calls for regulation to recall the days when media actors were regularly jailed and hounded in this country. Those times are not so far off.
We believe, frankly, that the calls for media regulation should be resisted at all levels. Let us leave the media, old and new, alone. It is still in its infancy, and dying with it. Let us not touch the media space, because we would not realize the danger of what we have created, when we are too far gone to realize our mistakes.
Leave the media alone!
(Editorial of the Daily Searchlight of 12th November, 2025)
