Contrary to criticisms that he failed to safeguard journalists during his tenure as Minister for Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah says he has been outstanding in efforts to protect journalists and their interest.
According to him, he led the implementation of several policies as Information Minister to ensure the safety of journalists in their line of duty.
“To the contrary, there is no Information Minister of our Republic on record who would go out there and call out attacks on journalists even when it’s perpetrated by people of his own party and report to the police and bring the police to a public forum to a public forum to come and account to how they dealt with it. I as Information Minister championed the subject of fighting for the safety of journalists,” he stated in an interview on JoyNews TV.
While acknowledging that journalists suffered attacks during his reign, he stated that he had take it upon himself to report such incidents regardless who was involved and kept the security agencies and the judiciary on their toes to ensure that justice prevailed.
This, he said, was not the case under the tenure of any of the others who headed the ministry.
Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has been criticized particularly by those in the media for doing little to protect the safety journalists as Information Minister despite being journalist himself.
But for him, he has been the only Information Minister in the history of Ghana to have prioritized the safety of the media and its personnel and believes posterity will be kind to him in that regard.
“I think history will be the best judge as times go by. We have had times when senior government officials seized cameras and recordings from journalists and not even bother to offer an apology or something. Under my watch, we tried to do our best for journalists even including advocating for increase salaries for journalists”.
