The Role of Ghanaian News Media Organisations in Countering Threats to Media Freedom and Journalists' Safety

Abstract

Journalist safety is vital to media freedom as it shows stakeholders' duties to protect the media from crime and to guard media freedom. The media have the power to combat problems via coverage, yet evidence submits that journalist insecurity persists in Ghana. So, the study aims to examine how the Ghanaian media are tackling journalist insecurity through coverage. Using agenda-setting and framing theories, content analyses of 66 news stories from newspapers, and five interviews are used to gather data to study the coverage and framing of journalist insecurity in the media and how they tackle threats to media freedom. Thematic analysis of data gathered showed that the newspapers were unable to give prominence to the problem because only 30.60% of total editions gave attention to the issue. Also, the media failed to present journalist insecurity as an issue that needs national attention because only 10.6% of the news stories used thematic frames. This undermines media freedom as it allows journalist insecurity to thrive, hence, failure to advocate journalist safety.