Private legal practitioner and law lecturer, Justice Abdulai, has called for the establishment of dedicated media courts in every region of Ghana to address the increasing number of violations and attacks against journalists.
His call comes amid widespread national outrage following a string of recent police and military brutalities, particularly the assault of a journalist and a civilian during the controversial demolition of the McDan warehouse at Spintex on July 30, 2025.
Speaking on The Big Issue on Channel One TV on Saturday, August 2, Justice Abdulai described the persistent attacks on media practitioners as a threat to press freedom and democratic accountability. He stressed that the current response mechanisms, often limited to press statements and internal investigations, are insufficient to ensure justice and deterrence.
To address the problem more systematically, he proposed the creation of “media courts,” specialised courts focused exclusively on handling civil and criminal infractions involving journalists.
He suggests that lawyer-journalist networks or legal support coalitions be formed to support victims and strengthen legal advocacy in media protection.
“My call to stem this tide will be to establish a dedicated court to deal with infractions of journalists. I probably will call it a media court. In every region, we should have one media court to deal purely and solely with infractions of the media, whether in the form of a civil action or criminal action.
“I believe it will serve a very useful purpose and work towards resolving this matter. In fact, I believe that will be the best way of resolving this whole issue, and of course, we should have dedicated prosecutors.
“I am sure that if we are to go deeper into this, we may even have lawyer-journalist associations, whether within the media space or other lawyers who may be willing to lend their support to these matters,” he stated.
