SECTOR 4 model, for example, and doesn’t want a story to come out, will pay anything to get the story shelved. It happens in every media house. The advantage that some of us have is that those at the top will stand strongly by the story.” “Some of these media houses are set up to be available to political power and to be vulnerable.” It was noted that there is corruption of the news itself, which undermines the integrity of news houses. “There is an over-concentration of political stories, and this is a corruption of the news in itself. We need to fight against this. They follow power, which is a corruption of the news.” This is especially problematic because of the high level of faith that the public have in the media. “The general public demonstrates a lot of faith in the media. When anyone is under attack by a state authority, they run to the media instead of the police. We’ve seen where environmental issues are ignored for years; government is forced to address this because of the media. When it comes to assessing the question of integrity by the media, the public faith in the media is huge. The media should be balanced against everything else we are hearing.” Scores: Individual scores: 1 Country does not meet indicator 2 Country meets only a few aspects of indicator 3 Country meets some aspects of indicator 4 Country meets most aspects of indicator 5 Country meets all aspects of the indicator Average score: 2.2 (2006:n/a; 2008:n/a; 2011:2.9; 2013:2.4) AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER GHANA 2017 67