By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
August 14, 2014
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
I couldn't care less what the publisher and editors of the Ghanaian Chronicle newspaper think about yours truly. But I really do give a heck of a lot of damn about my authorial integrity and intellectual property rights. And you can bet your bottom-dollar that I am hell-bent on ensuring that my intellectual property rights are not rudely trampled or taken for granted. For, needless to say, I put a lot of thought, energy and time into every one of the articles that I write and publish on the various Ghanaian media websites. The fact that I do so voluntarily, without demanding to be paid, does not mean that just about any Asomasi or Obenteng can take my authorial integrity for granted.
I am writing this article because the publisher and editors of the Ghanaian Chronicle appear to have made a pet avocation of routinely disrespecting my authorial integrity. Several times in the past, they have published my articles and sourced them to other websites, almost as if to suggest that the sourced websites owned the property rights to my articles, or were either my paymasters or paymistresses. On those occasions, I have not bothered to call them up on such expedient mischief because in the academic and professional world of writing and publishing, apportioning authorial credit where such credit is due is perfectly in order. It is, in fact, the norm.
What I am complaining about presently is something altogether different. It has to do with willful plagiarism, and the adamant refusal to recognize this flagrant breach of my legal rights vis-a-vis my intellectual property. In the past, for example, the Chronicle editors have published a couple of my articles with my name correctly appended to them but somebody else's photograph attached to the same. I know for a fact that this had been deliberately done, because my written protestations had not prompted the Chronicle editors to correct their errors and apologize for the same. Not that I really care about apologies; I only care that protocol is studiously followed and my authorial integrity respected.
The article about which I am writing this warning letter/article is captioned "No Witch-Hunting In Woyome, Please!" and it appeared in the Chronicle's web edition of August 5, 2014. It also appeared on MyJoyOnline.com, Ghanaweb.com, Vibeghana.com, Spyghana.com and Modernghana.com, among a host of other Ghanaian websites. What is at once interesting and significant to note is that each and every one of the websites on which the aforementioned article appeared had my name as the byline of the original author, with the curious exception of that which appears on the website of the Ghanaian Chronicle.
On the latter website, the writer is inexplicably misidentified as "Ohenenana Obonti." Now, any keen reader of my writings is well aware of the fact that my name is not "Ohenenana Obonti"; neither do I sport nor have sported that name as either my real name or an alias during the nearly three decades that I have been writing and publishing as a reporter, editor, essayist and columnist.
As of this writing, I had issued two separate warnings to the website of the Ghanaian Chronicle demanding that "Ohenenana Obonti's" name be promptly taken off the byline of my Woyome article to no avail. I am not "Ohenenana Obonti," I have absolutely no association with the aforementioned impersonator of my article, neither was I ever aware of anybody by that name until I serendipitously discovered the same on the website of the Ghanaian Chronicle.
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