I’ll only stop EXPOSING corruption if Ghanaians want me to- Anas fires back at critics

FILE PHOTO: Undercover journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas attends an interview with Reuters in Accra, Ghana June 11, 2018. REUTERS/Francis Kokoroko/File Photo

The “name, shame and jail” investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas has asked Ghanaians calling for his head to make it known if they want him to stop exposing ‘corruption’ so he stops.

The celebrated global investigative journalist has been under attack from many after publishing his ‘Galamsey fraud’ exposé which involves some persons in the current New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration

Lawyer Yaw Boafo, a Private Legal Practitioner and a Secretary to the Ghana Bar Association (GBA) in an interview with Kwame Adinkra on Pure Morning Drive, charged state authorities to subject Anas’ modus operandi into critical scrutiny as he has veered off his known and accepted practice and employing different tactics which is ethically wrong.

He said “Kwame, Anas has changed his methods of operation and for me that’s the difficulty that I have. Anas himself, his earlier works that earned him praise from Barack Obama is not the same work he is doing. When you give people gifts to entrap them, that’s not fighting corruption.

The exposé is much ado about nothing. Let us be fair to the people involve. Serious investigation is when someone is caught in their normal processes but if you approach someone for help and in the end you give him a token as an appreciation and you end up calling that corruption that is bad. That is not investigative journalism…Is about time someone check on the manner in which Anas conducts his investigation in his attempt to discredit people. This is a lame attempt to investigative journalism.”

But commenting on the issue on the same show, Lawyer and Spokesperson for Anas Aremeyaw Anas, Kissi Adjabeng debunked the claim that Anas has changed his methodology.

He said the calls for Anas’ head is because he is exposing people with power this time around and if Ghanaians want Anas to stop exposing corruption, they should just make it known so he stops.

“Kwame, nothing has changed about Anas Aremeyaw Anas investigative methods. People who are calling for a change in his modus operandi do not understand what they are saying. When he started, he was fighting people who do not have power backing but now he is fighting corrupt people with power that’s why they are calling for his head. If we do not want the truth, we should tell Anas so he stops. The only reason why they are complaining is because they have been caught on tape. In law what Anas is doing is not entrapment, if someone will take a bribe, nothing will stop the person.”

Anas Aremeyaw Anas, is a Ghanaian investigative journalist born in the late 1970s. He is famous for utilizing his anonymity as a tool in his investigative arsenal; very few people had seen his face until an “unmasking” during a BBC interview in November 2015 — and this was a prosthetic. A politically non-aligned multimedia journalist who specializes in print media and documentaries, Anas focuses on issues of human rights and anti-corruption in Ghana and sub-Saharan Africa.

Anas has won multiple awards for journalism and advocating against slavery, and his investigative works have won him worldwide attention. Barack Obama in a speech during a 2009 visit to Ghana said “An independent press. A vibrant private sector. A civil society. Those are the things that give life to democracy. We see that spirit in courageous journalists like Anas Aremeyaw Anas, who risked his life to report the truth.”

In December 2015 Foreign Policy magazine named Anas one of 2015’s leading global thinkers, and he has been invited to talk about his work at international conferences. In 2016 Anas had a “Best Journalist” award named after him by the Press Foundation in Ghana.

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