A FOUR-DAY workshop is being organised by the Ghana Media Advocacy Programme in Accra on investigative journalism and cyber crime for selected participants from the media, both local and foreign, and the security agencies. The organisers must have been informed by the need to promote healthy collaboration between the security agencies and journalists whose effective discharge of their duties will help to contain the use of the Internet as a tool by fraudsters.
The computer age has brought about many opportunities for advancement in the fields of business, education, health and social interaction. At the same time, some unscrupulous persons are exploiting the opportunities offered by the world-wide web to perpetrate Internet fraud. Internet fraud is gaining notoriety, particularly among the youth whose skills in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) have enabled them to defraud their unsuspecting victims. For this reason, cyber cafes have become playgrounds for teenagers who abandon the classroom to find ways of duping innocent persons. The Internet has its positive sides, but sometimes the negative aspect of the Information Age is allowed to take centre stage, making it difficult to differentiate between the genuine users of the Internet and those who want to use it to get rich through fraudulent means.
Very often the media carry reports of cyber frauds perpetrated by citizens from our neighbouring countries. All kinds of information are posted on the Internet, sometimes referred to as junk e-mail. The Internet fraudsters make their messages look real and credible. They lie about their real intentions. The claims made by these faceless persons on the Internet that fortunes have been bequeathed to them by certain leaders in Africa have turned out to be bogus or even scams. It is said that because junk e-mails are so cheap and easy to create, fraudsters increasingly use them to dupe unsuspecting businessmen and women.
The DAILY GRAPHIC welcomes the efforts by the Ghana Media Advocacy Programme, in collaboration with the Ghana Journalists Association, and with sponsorship from the US Embassy in Accra, to build the capacity of journalists to educate the people about the inherent dangers in the fraudulent application of the Internet. It is unfortunate that in this day and age many journalists still consider computers as 'fetishes’ and are afraid to use them to ply their trades or vocation. Many aspects of our lives have seen high tech. As the saying goes, "garbage in, garbage out". It is, therefore, important to remind all that computers themselves do not commit crimes but that the people who use the gadgets do so and at great cost to businesses.
The DAILY GRAPHIC, therefore, calls on the participants to take this workshop very seriously, largely because the organisers want to provide journalists with tools like the blog to enhance media practice.
The media also require more training in investigative journalism so that journalism will go beyond hand-outs and speeches to inform and educate the public about the development process in the country. Our newspapers are full of speeches by public office holders, making the newspapers event driven, instead of setting agenda and holding public office holders accountable for their actions.
The DAILY GRAPHIC also calls on all to support the security agencies in dealing with the cyber crime that threatens to destroy the country as a safe business destination. Everybody reckons that ICT is used to counter development challenges and not to create bottlenecks in the system. It requires the vigilance of all in order to establish a culture where all of us will police the system to ensure that the bad nuts are flushed out. Lastly, we appeal to all to realise that it is not every information on the Internet that is true. Some online information is a tool for fraud, hence the need for everybody to think properly before making a business decision based on information obtained on the Internet.
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