Media Business Ownership and Control in Ghana’s democracy

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.