Media Business Ownership and Control in Ghana’s democracy

Abstract

The paper examines the problem of media ownership,
its control imperatives and the overarching
partisanship in Ghana’s democracy. It explicates the
challenges posed by media concentration,
manipulation, and interference by political actors on
the health of Ghana’s democracy. This is a
conceptual paper and complemented by theoretical
arguments with the findings drawn from analysis of
secondary material. Media business ownership and
control has a bearing on its operations in both liberal
and illiberal democracies. Conceptual and
theoretical arguments underlined the study from the
standpoint of democratic theory, pluralist media and
Marxist media ownership theories. These concepts
and theories were engaged to address the
state/public and private ownership imperatives in the
Ghanaian media ecology. From the study, two
findings emerged. First, media business ownership
and control are promoting more partisanship and
polarization of the citizenry. Secondly, evidence of
state control, interference and manipulation in the
Ghanaian media space have been reported in this
paper. The study concludes that a deliberate policy is
required about creating an enabling environment for
more entrepreneurs to invest in the media rather than
politicians in order to prevent unbridled partisanship
and bias. It noted that all stakeholders strive for
policy changes which will give true meaning to media
independence.