Stan Dogbe denies smashing GBC journalist’s recorder at 37 Military Hospital

Stan Dogbe, a former Presidential Staffer in the erstwhile John Mahama administration, has denied smashing the recorder of Yahaya Kwamoah, a Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) journalist in 2015.

Kwamoah attempted at 37 Military Hospital to secretly record a conversation between Stan Dogbe, some government officials and the family of the late Samuel Nuamah, a journalist with the Ghanaian Times who had died from an accident involving the Presidential Press Corps.

In 2015, Samuel Nuamah, a senior journalist with the Ghanaian Times died from an accident involving the Presidential Press Corps on the Tema-Akosombo highway near the Shai Hills. They were returning from an assignment in the Volta region when the road traffic accident happened.

At 37, Stan Dogbe was reported to have smashed Yahaya Kwamoah’s recorder after the former suspected the GBC journalist was secretly recording a private conversation between him, his colleague government officials and the family members of the late Samuel Nuamah.

But in an interview with Joy FM Thursday morning, about five years later, Stan Dogbe has responded to the public condemnation of his alleged act.

He indicated that he only took the recorder from the reporter and dropped it on the floor.

“I never smashed it, I didn’t touch the gentleman, I didn’t hold him, I didn’t even know who he was. It was not until we had finished with Sammy’s family and Co before Maxwell Okamafuor and Co came and said, ‘Oh the guy was from GBC radio’…,” Dogbe narrated.

He continued: “Our job as journalists is to look for information no matter what, but if you’re recording me without my knowledge and I also find out, I have to stop you from doing that. So I dropped the recorder, I never smashed it. I never hit it with a stone, I never touched the gentleman but, of course, once the story came out and how it was portrayed and the role of the Media Foundation for West Africa, and the people who were paid to raise petition against Stan Dogbe and make noise about it…”



Stan Dogbe indicated that what was important to him whilst all that was going on was that he found out that Yahaya Kwamoah was a colleague journalist and that irrespective of what he did, he the journalist did not make upheavals about it but instead other people reacted.

He informed listeners that he has apologized to Yahaya Kwamoah as well as the GJA President, Affail Monney, and has replaced the recorder he dropped on the floor with a new one.

It remains to be seen what the various media analysts who condemned the incident will say.

For now, Stan Dogbe has reignited the debate about media ethics.

Critics are already asking: “Why now? Is this a spin-doctoring job aided by MultiMedia, Stan Dogbe’s former employer?”

Source: www.ghanaweb.com