On Thursday , the Bank of Ghana was confronted with the challenge of denying rumours of a fire outbreak at its premises that was gaining currency on. Social media.
According to the Bank, the said false report followed a widespread video on social media.
Hours later, when the rumors had spread like the proverbial wildfire, the Bank in an explainer said the exercise was rather a “routine fire drill to prepare staff for real-time fire situation”.
In a statement, the Central Bank said, “the general public is advised to disregard the reports.”
The exercise was conducted in collaboration with the Ghana National Fire Service, the National Ambulance Service and the Ghana Police Service.
“As a public facility, routine fire drill is necessary for testing the efficiency and preparedness of the Bank’s safety systems to manage emergencies like fires, and inculcate in the staff of the Bank fire safety evacuation procedures”.
“Bank of Ghana by this medium cautions against false reportage intended to create fear and panic in the country”, the statement concluded.
The Ghanaian Publisher is worried over this creeping attitude gaining some notoriety among Ghanaians.
Aided by the proliferation of social media, fake news is spread among the populace without fact checking before releasing them into the public space.
Most of the time, the deaths of celebrities and other prominent people have been rumoured and in most times broken on social media even before families have done so.
In the instant case, social media was buzzing with lots of conspiracy theories. The paper cannot use its editorial columns to elevate such views.
The paper holds that its about time proper laws are fashioned to sanitize the social media space.
For us fake news and its attendant hasty generalization of issues and putting same on social media is a canker we must look at as a nation.
With the government putting in place measures to link SIM cards to its owners, we opine, that it is high time somebody is punished for such actions.