NCA commissions broadcasting monitoring centre to halt unlawful activities in media space

The National Communications Authority (NCA) has established an advanced modern Broadcasting Monitoring Centre to clamp down on unlawful broadcasting activities in Ghana.

The facility is expected to cleanse the radio and television broadcast sectors, dominated by illegal trends and harmful broadcasts influencing crime.

Director General of the NCA, Mr. Joe Anokye stated that the NCA will now have evidence of what goes on in the broadcasting landscape to outwit regulatory authorities following an explosion of digital channels, and practices such as charlatanic advertisements have resulted in mass scams and ritual murders.

Joe Anokye stated that two key projects have been initiated towards enhancing the efficiency of the Authority’s operations.

“The difference is that state agencies have to provide relevant court orders to access the SIM-related data to protect the subscriber and to comply with the tents of the data protection act whiles information from BMC will require no such requirements given that the content has already been published in the public domain,” he explained.

He explained that the first initiative is automating the spectrum management process with new automated spectrum management which is to digitize the application process.

At the official commissioning of the Broadcasting Monitoring Centre (BMC) in Accra on Tuesday, November 29, the Director General of the National Communications Authority (NCA), Mr. Joe Anokye, highlighted the importance of the facility to national development.

He said by 2017; it had become apparent that authorities could no longer rely exclusively on periodic spectrum monitoring to verify compliance with technical conditions associated with authorisations.

They could not fully leverage legacy systems to efficiently manage the increased broadcast authorisations.

Mr Anokye was quick to point out that in 2021, “there was widespread public concern about the negative repercussions of the ritualist contents of television stations that entertain spiritualists as well as charlatanic advertisements which mislead a large section of the public”.

“There were calls on the regulatory institutions with oversight over the electronic media, i.e the National Media Commission (NMC) and the NCA, to take appropriate action to deal with the issues”.

By: Richard Obeng Bediako| metrotvonline.com|Ghana

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