Manasseh Azure writes: Why law firm rejoinder on suspended pregnant lawyers should not be taken seriously

On Tuesday January 14, 2020, theghanareport.com published a story about a law firm that had suspended two female lawyers after they go pregnant whiles doing pupillage.

The law firm, Legal Link, has issued a rejoinder accusing award-winning journalist, Manasseh Azure of biased reporting. In an article, Manasseh Azure Awuni has responded to the law firm’s reaction.

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Dear Legal Ink, I have read your rejoinder but all the issues you raised and justifications are captured in the story I did. In most instances, you set your own questions and answered them. In your rejoinder, you also failed to address two critical issues, which I came to you for answers but you declined to comment.

1.

The first point in your rejoinder said my headline created a false impression of suspension. The letter you wrote to the two women contained that word THREE times. In paragraph 4, you used the words “suspending” and “suspend” to describe your action. In paragraph 5, you used the word “suspension”. What did I get wrong by using your own word in the headline the story? And mind you, it isn’t the activity (pupilage) you suspended, but the persons. The pupilage is still ongoing in your firm, but the two pregnant women were forced to hold on until after deliver. The four remaining ones are on it.

2

In your letter, you claimed one of the pregnant women had missed work on “many occasions” for which reason you were “suspending” her pupilage. She said you lied, and that she missed work only once. She called the HR manager to challenge that claim and did not get an answer.

When I was coming to the firm to interview you, she asked me to challenge you to give me the dates on which you claimed she did not come to work. In my recorded interview with you, the only specific date you mentioned for her absence was December 27, 2019 but you said she missed work more than once.

After the interview, she insisted you were lying so I sent a WhatsApp message to you, asking if you could supply me with any other date, because I wanted to do an accurate report. You declined to comment on it. Yet you’re accusing me of biased reporting. Is it because the people out there do not know all the facts and what went on before the report was published? How difficult is it to say the days someone missed work when she worked only two months?

3.

One main reason the pregnant women said they felt discriminated against was that another male pupil in your firm who works with a state security agency has been allowed to work from Monday to Wednesday as a pupil so he can still keep his job at the security agency. You failed to respond to this issue when I put it to you. If it is possible to make this special arrangement for him why were the pregnant women not given options? And when you are reporting to the General Legal Council after the 12 months are you going to state that this person worked from Monday to Wednesday?

Also, you cited absenteeism as a reason for asking the two pregnant women to suspend their pupilage. There is a young woman who is also undergoing pupilage who absented herself more than the two pregnant women due to ill-health but your management encouraged her to stay on even when she suggested she wanted to defer her pupilage.

4

In my recorded interview with you, you painted a picture that one of the pregnant women was not serious because she should have rescheduled a doctor’s appointment she had scheduled for January 7, 2020 because you had a training on that day.

You said if she was really serious about the training, she could have done something about it because someone had rescheduled hers a day earlier. When I pointed out to you that some specialists have specific days they go to the hospital and that the patient could not always shift it a day or two earlier as you said the pregnant woman should have done, you accused me of speculation.

The woman explained she did not want to miss work so she decided to schedule the doctor’s appointment on a public holiday even before the training was announced And you admitted she informed you about this doctor’s appointment about a week earlier.

So, if you hold a training for your lawyers on a public holiday and a pregnant woman has a doctor’s appointment on that day, do you cite this to a journalist as part of reasons to justify your suspension of her pupillage? And if this an other litany of other accusations and counter-accusations did not make it to the final report, does it mean the journalist is biased against you? Not all the allegations made it to the report I did.

5

You are excellent lawyers, but your knowledge about journalism appears very limited so ask before you start accusing journalists. You don’t conclude that a journalist is in conflict of interest because one of the persons involved in the story is his wife’s friend. Joy FM and Citi FM report stories that are about their stations.

The BBC reports stories about the station. They report stories about their advertisers. You can deal with the content, in which case you failed because you accuse me of an inaccurate headline but you used the same word you’re contesting THREE TIMES to describe your action in your letter “suspending” the pregnant women.

Again, I quoted the reasons you gave in your letter, including ill-health. The fact that you mentioned in the interview that one of them once felt dizzy at work (which is part of the ill-health anyway) and did not find that in the report does not make the journalist biased because of his supposed conflict of interest.

As I have pointed out, there were many other allegations against your law firm, which did not make it to the story. Journalists tell stories about their environment and they are not precluded from reporting on issues that affect them.

Remember when the women accused you of discussing their pregnancy with their colleagues in their absence? I could not have put everything in that report because it’s impossible and I had to stay with the salient issues.

In 2009, Joanna Connors of The Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland won the American Society of Newspaper Editors award for Non deadline Writing with a story titled, “TELLING THE STORY I TRIED TO FORGET.” That gripping story is about a man who had raped her (the journalist), and she won an award with a story about her own ordeal.

The distinguished judges did not set aside that entry because the reporter was reporting on her own rape. Every profession has its intricacies. If we are to go by your view of journalism and conflict of interest, then journalists won’t report about politicians and political parties.