Prof Amin Alhassan, Director-General of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), has urged media organisations to adopt and implement the Model Safety of Journalists Policy to strengthen protection for journalists working in unsafe environments.
He said the financial difficulties facing some media organisations, particularly their inability to maintain payrolls and pay staff regularly, had contributed to unsafe working conditions for journalists.
Speaking at the launch of the Model Safety of Journalists Policy in Accra, Prof Alhassan called on media managers to take the document seriously and work together to adapt it to their respective institutional structures and operational needs.
He said although GBC had a strong health and safety policy covering all workers, not only journalists, practical challenges continued to affect the organisation’s ability to guarantee the safety of its staff.
To illustrate the challenges, he recounted an incident three weeks earlier involving a young female journalist who called him close to midnight after completing an assignment because she had no transport to return home.
Prof Alhassan said he had to make several calls to arrange a vehicle to convey the journalist home safely.
He explained that although GBC had more than 10 vehicles parked, fuelled and ready for use every evening, the organisation lacked sufficient drivers to operate them.
He said the incident highlighted the gap between having safety policies and having the financial and logistical resources required to implement them effectively.
Prof Alhassan also commended the research team for producing the Model Safety of Journalists Policy, describing it as an important document that could guide media organisations in strengthening their workplace safety arrangements.
He encouraged media houses to build on the initiative by adapting the proposed framework to reflect their individual circumstances and existing measures for protecting employees.
He noted that several media organisations already had some minimum guarantees in place to protect their workers, including journalists, although these were not necessarily contained in a formal, certified safety framework.
He said adopting the model policy would provide an opportunity for media organisations to strengthen those arrangements and create safer working conditions for their staff.
