[ 2016-11-30 ]

Supreme Court scraps content authorisation law
The Supreme Court has dismissed the National Media
Commission’s (NMC) Standard Content Regulation
law (2015) which required media organisations to
obtain approval before broadcasting their
content.

On Tuesday, 30 November, Justice Benin struck out
L.I.2224 saying it has no legal grounding in the
bye-law and was, therefore, inconsistent with the
1992 Constitution.

Per the new regulation, broadcasters were required
to seek authorisation from the NMC before airing
content. Flouters of the law could have been
imprisoned for two years or fined.

Unhappy with the regulation, the Ghana Independent
Broadcasters Association (GIBA) challenged it at
the Supreme Court.

President of GIBA, Akwesi Agyemang, had earlier
argued that the clause of the L.I., which
sanctions imprisonment as punishment for media
houses that fail to abide by the law, contravenes
the 1992 Constitution.

He was of the view that the law advocated by the
NMC and passed by Parliament, was a subtle means
of sneaking back into the country’s statutes,
through the back door, the repealed criminal libel
law.

Mr Agyemang agreed that there was the need to
regulate content and sanitise the media, but
disagreed with the issue of imprisonment for
flouting the law.

Source - Classfmonline

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