Dr. Gyissah suspects the story could have been mooted by advocates for homosexual rights, who want the practice legalized.
According to the Daily Graphic June 10 edition, the registered homosexuals included students in junior and senior high schools, the polytechnics and workers.
The Paper said the revelation came out at a day's workshop organised in Takoradi on June 9, 2011, for more 200 health workers drawn from the 17 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in the Western Region.
The workshop, which was funded by the United States Agency for international Development (USAlD), was aimed at training health workers to be abreast of the basic facts about HIV and AIDS, as well as manage post-exposure prophylaxis of blood products and body fluids in the course of their work.
The Paper further reported that it also came out that more than 2,900 lesbians and gays had been registered in the two regions in 2008, the figure tripling as of 2010, with most of them testing not only positive for STDs but also for HIV/AIDS after they had undergone voluntary counselling and testing.
The rise in STDs, including HIV, in the two regions, according to the NGOs, was due to the fact that almost all those registered were bi-sexual, with some having wives and girlfriends.
That, according to the NGOs, resulted in the rapid spread of STDs, including HIV/AIDS.
But Dr. Wilberforce Gyissah says the Paper’s report has too many loopholes to be true. He told Citi News that he discovered the loopholes in the story following a research he was carrying out on homosexuality in Ghana.
“In my content analysis of the story from the perspective of intellectual study, I realise there were serious problems with the story carried by the Daily Graphic. First of all, there is the issue of source strategy in journalism. The story was carried and banner-headlined with a reporter’s name, but nobody was mentioned in that story in terms of source attribution. The next thing was that, not even a single NGO has been mentioned as being an NGO that is involved in the registration of these homosexuals".
“Then I also have an issue with the JHS and SHS students. Most of these students are minors. Are we saying that they have left schools to register with NGOs declaring that they are homosexuals? Or is it the case that certain elements are trying to draw our children out of school and sodomize them? That should be a concern for all of us. Without the names of the NGO’s, Graphic did not provide any attribution, and in addition to that, there was no demography to tell us how many people from Central and Western Region, and from the specific districts or localities are involved in this. I think that for a flagship Newspaper to carry a story such as this it would have meant that they had every necessary ingredient as far as journalism is concerned. So they have to rethink and go back to the story and look at it critically”.
“What is even worrying was the fact that, there was another story carried by the same Newspaper and put in a corner somewhere attributed to a senior official from the Social Welfare Department, who said that they had no name of an NGO in the Western or Central Region that was dealing with health workers or registration of homosexuals. And that raises serious doubts as far as the credibility of the story is concerned” he noted.
Dr. Wilberforce Gyissah said the Newspaper had a responsibility to look out for the NGOs engaged in the said registration, in order to further establish the ages of the JHS and SHS students alleged to have registered as homosexuals.
“My position is that, Graphic would have to go back and do a re-evaluation of that particular story. If it is an attempt to legitimize gay rights in this country, then so be it. However if it is an attempt by somebody hiding behind the scenes with a long hand trying to push this into the media to the sub-consciousness of the people and use it to manipulate the minds of our people to believe that this is becoming legitimate, then I have a serious problem with it” he noted.
When contacted for a response, the Editor of the Daily Graphic, Mr. Ransford Tetteh, told Citi News the Paper will respond at the appropriate time if it deems it necessary.
BY: Ebenezer Afanyi Dadzie,Citifmonline.com/Ghana
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