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Samia interacts with Graphic Editorial Board

The Chairperson of the Convention People’s Party (CPP), Ms Samia Yaba Nkrumah, has lauded the Daily Graphic for the good work it is doing in educating and informing the populace.

She, however, expressed reservations about a report carried by the paper on June 20, 2013 on a fact-finding committee’s report initiated by the CPP, saying that there were serious misrepresentations in the report.

Ms Nkrumah, therefore, urged the paper to correct the misrepresentations when she paid a visit to the Editorial Team of the Daily Graphic.

She was accompanied by the party’s Director of Education, Mr Kosi Dedey, and the lawyer for CPP, Mr Yaw Osafo. They stated that they wanted the Daily Graphic to publish a letter which the Chairperson of CPP sent to the editor requesting for a meeting to know the source of the publication, how the report came about and the way forward.

According to her, the report which stated that some persons, including herself, had been indicted for failing to account for GH¢700,000 meant for the elections was false, adding that the report did not indict anybody.

Ms Nkrumah, who once practised as a print journalist, said: “My main issue is with the way the report was interpreted. We believe that the facts were misrepresented. It tarnished my image and needs to be sorted. It has also cost the party dearly.”

“We want the Editor, Mr Ransford Tetteh, and the Managing Director, Mr Ken Ashigbey, to look into how the story was written. If it were a reproduction of the report, we would not have had any problems, but it was twisted,” she added.

“I do not want to say what this particular report has done to my reputation. What puzzles me is how this happened. I wish you had printed the full report; it would have been kinder,” Ms Nkrumah stated.

She said the CPP, as a party, had struggled to get itself more organised than ever before and, therefore, called on the Daily Graphic to look into the said report again and put forward the correct information from it.

As a way of smoking the peace pipe, Ms Nkrumah assured the Editorial Team that she was going to investigate an allegation by the party’s Communications Director, Nii Armah Akomfrah, that the Daily Graphic was paid huge sums of money to publish the said story and apologise accordingly, if the allegations were not true.

Ms Samia Nkrumah interacting with Mr Kenneth Ashigbey MD GCGL (right) and Kobby Asmah, Political Editor of Daily Graphic (middle).She, however, called on the Daily Graphic to ensure that it reciprocated the gesture by reassessing the published story and retract it, if possible.

Mr Tetteh assured Ms Nkrumah that the paper would do a retrospection of the report and give the party a fair publication if it has to.

According to him, the paper has over the years striven to ensure that it maintained its integrity in the process of informing and educating the public.

Mr Tetteh who said the paper still maintained that it got its report from an authentic document, however, assured Ms Nkrumah that it would look into the issue again and act accordingly.

“We do not impose our views on people; we operate as a human institution that can make mistakes, so we cross-check and if convinced, we run our story,” he added.

He also stated that the doors of the paper were always open to all in finding solutions to such situations.

For his part, Mr Kenneth Ashigbey, MD Graphic Communication Group Limited (GCGL)   said, “our business is not to run anybody down but Article 12 of the 1992 Constitution mandates us to hold people in leadership positions accountable.”

The story, he said, was, therefore, not done with any malice or with an intent to destroy the CPP.

He said the paper would consider the chairperson’s request of doing an introspection into the published report and added that, “if you are taking your pound of flesh, fine, but make sure you do not draw blood with it” and that the company would not rest until the CPP Communications director had proved his allegations that “huge sums of money changed hands” before the publication.

The Political Editor of the Daily Graphic, Mr Kobby Asmah, advised that politicians should be more open with the media whenever it needed to verify information to complement a story, saying that this is the only way such  situations would be prevented.

By Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho

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