Melania Trump
Ghanaian journalists, who were assigned to cover the visit of the US First Lady, Melania Trump to the palace of the Oguaa Paramount Chief in Cape Coast and Cape Coast Castle, suffered discrimination at the hands of US Secret Service agents.
Even though the journalists were conveyed to Cape Coast to provide coverage for the trip to the Cape Coast Castle and the palace of Osabarima Kwesi Atta II, they were virtually prevented from entering the Cape Coast Castle with Mrs. Trump.
On the contrary, international journalists were allowed to follow Mrs. Trump to the Castle to cover her tour.
Ghanaian journalists were not allowed to see the slave dungeons even though Mrs. Trump called people to do so, saying “The dungeons that I saw, it’s really something that people should see and experience.”
She reportedly spent about an hour at the castle, touring its dungeons and walking through the sacred ‘Door of No Return’ which thousands of slaves passed through in the 1800s to be ferried across the Atlantic to the Americas to work for white masters, reports the Daily Mail.
Local journalists, who were forced to wake up at about 3am to travel to Cape Coast cover the US First Lady’s visit to the chief’s palace and the Castle.
However, midway through the journey from Accra, journalists who were being conveyed to Cape Coast by the Ministry of Information were told that that their services were no longer needed because the First Lady had ‘changed’ her mind and wanted her visit to the Castle to be a ‘private and solemn’ one.
It later emerged that the White House Communications Team and the US Secret Service simply did not want local journalists to follow Mrs. Trump to the Castle, since hours after the Ghanaian journalists had been forced to return to Accra, international media outlets like Daily Mail, BBC, started publishing news about her visit to the Castle.
Ghanaian journalists were specifically told that Melania did not want to speak about her visit to the Castle, but she later granted interviews to foreign media that accompanied her there.
Ghanaian journalists faced difficulties in covering her visit to the chief’s palace where she had gone to seek permission to visit the Cape Coast Castle.
JoyNews, GhOne and others were not allowed to enter the Obama Hall with their cameras.
JoyNews, GhOne and the other stations were asked to take the footage from GTV, TV3 and UTV while for the print media, only Daily Graphic was allowed to send a cameraman into the hall, with the rest of the newspapers being told to ‘beg’ the paper for pictures.
There were separate exit doors for Ghanaian journalists and international journalists that accompanied the First Lady.
Local journalists were virtually prevented from moving close to the convoy of Mrs. Trump.
Some local journalists complained to officials of the US Embassy who were present but they did nothing about the situation.
Personnel of the Ghana Police Service were virtually rendered redundant by US Secret Service agents who protected almost all gates to the Obama Hall.
Mrs. Trump arrived in Ghana on Tuesday, October 2, 2018 as part of her four-nation tour of Africa which will see her visit Egypt, Malawi and Kenya.
On the first day of her visit, she toured the Ridge Hospital in Accra in the company of Ghana’s First Lady, Rebecca Akufo-Addo to present gifts to the kids.
Reports said that US Secret Service agents also maltreated local journalists who covered the US First Lady’s visit to the hospital.
By Melvin Tarlue