Editorial (The Daily Searchlight, 16th February, 2022)
Of late, the Ghana Police Service has been charging certain people before court on a charge called ‘publication of false news’.
So far, several media personnel have fallen victim to this charge.
Whilst the Daily Searchlight does not approve of, or subscribe to whatever these men and women may have said, we believe that the government and the security agencies should be very slow in criminalizing speech.
We believe that as much as possible, people who believe that they have been maligned, should be encouraged to employ the civil process to clear their names.
Where, as is becoming the uncomfortable norm, people are arrested because of specious statements they have made against certain other citizens, it would lead to a culture of silence. It would also lead to abuse of privilege.
We call on the government, as a matter of urgency, to prevail on the police to desist from the culture of drumming individuals to police stations over speech.
Eventually, this would lead to the undesired effect of creating a culture of silence.
(The Daily Searchlight appears every day on the newsstands and for sale 24 hours every day and all week on www.ghananewsstand.com. Visit www.ghananewsstand.com for a wide variety of newspapers published in Ghana and from across the world.)
