QUESTION OF THE DAY
The media houses and media practitioners are making public declaration on comments made by President Barrow touching on issues of professional impropriety by an undisclosed journalist.
A distinction should be made between public relation organisations and media houses. In many countries today, public relation institutions have sprouted aimed out promoting businesses and personalities. A number of them do have promotional magazines that are essentially meant for advertisements.
Media houses and media practitioners whose role it is to disseminate information such as news are duty bound to be independent and impartial in publishing facts. They are bound by principles. They must publish the truth in good faith in the public interest. Once they depart from the ethics of the profession.
This is why many media houses are calling on the president to indicate which media house or media practitioner has offered to serve as the mouth piece of the state house. If the President states nothing on his return then the media houses should call on the president to work on repealing the provision which deals with false news so that any information that cannot be corroborated will be taken as an opinion and not a fact and should be dismissed in the public media so that it will not misguide people.
