A fascinating debate has broken out in the wake of the Ghanaian National Communications Authority’s (NCA’s) decision to shut down two radio stations in the country for their refusal and/or inability to service and renew their frequency licenses, in some cases dating back many years. The corporate owners of the stations are said to be owing to the NCA back fees and levies in substantial amounts.
The cool thing about this debate is that perfectly reasonable and well-informed people are unable to agree. Those are the debates worth having, especially in a democratic society where elite consensus should be hard won.
My position on the matter is, however, fairly simple. The NCA should go to the civil courts to collect its overdue fees and any fines it has imposed and should continue to impose on the corporate owners of the radio stations for failing to meet renewal deadlines and for broadcasting without a valid license. What they should avoid in the future is the use of force to physically prevent broadcasting.
It is easy to misconstrue the problem as one of “freedom of speech versus property enforcement”. Whilst this categorisation is close to the true situation, it is not really accurate. We are not dealing here with the individual rights of broadcast journalists in the employ of Radio Gold and Radio XYZ to express their views. Nor are we evaluating the right of NCA to use legitimate means to prevent expropriation of their property – the airwaves – by private individuals.
Mischaracterising things that way has led some people to argue that the Radio Station staff may have a constitutional right to free speech, but nothing in the law says they should be free to grab hold of other people’s property – in this case, radio spectrum – and use it anyhow they wish in their bid to enjoy and exercise that right.
One person put it this way: having freedom of worship doesn’t mean you can walk into Accra Mall Shoprite and attempt to conduct a “church service” with your motley crew of “prayer warriors” without permission. In the same vein, according to this argument, Radio Gold journalists should feel free to resort to their personal blogs or podcasts or even syndicate their views through other media channels.
No one is preventing them from practising free speech or journalism; they just need to cough up the cash to pay for the means of practising that journalism. After all, free speech doesn’t include free access to laptops, pens or recording devices, so why should it presuppose uninhibited access to spectrum. This is an unfortunate overapproximation.
The real tension here is not among competing private interests, but rather between two public goods:
- A Free Press (not just “free speech”, per se, note the subtle difference); and
- Fair Public Access to Spectrum (not property rights in spectrum).
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