New Times Corporation (NTC)

New Times Corporation (NTC) is one of Ghana’s two state-owned newspaper publishers and the company behind the Ghanaian Times, described by the State Interests and Governance Authority as Ghana’s third most-read daily newspaper. It is one of the oldest names in Ghanaian publishing, and the State Media Monitor typology cites it as a textbook example of a state-owned newspaper publisher that is managed by a state body while funding itself through commercial revenue. The corporation began as the Guinea Press, established by Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, in 1957 as the printing house for his Convention People’s Party. After Nkrumah’s overthrow in 1966 it was taken over as state property by decree in 1968, and in 1971 it was reconstituted as the New Times Corporation by an instrument of incorporation. It has been state-owned ever since.

Media assets

The Ghanaian Times: the flagship national daily, established in 1957 and published six times a week; described by SIGA as Ghana’s third most-read daily

The Spectator: national weekly newspaper (also styled the Weekend Spectator)

Ghanaiantimes.com.gh — the corporation’s online news portal, alongside the titles’ social-media channels

Ownership and governance

NTC is a wholly state-owned enterprise, registered as such with the State Enterprises Commission. Its highest governing authority is a board of directors appointed by the National Media Commission (NMC), the constitutional media regulator, in consultation with the President, and the NMC also appoints the Managing Director in consultation with the President. The State Media Monitor review identifies these appointment channels, and the editorial influence they carry, as the basis for treating NTC as state-managed in practice.

The composition of NTC’s leadership turned over substantially during the review period. A new board chaired by Kwamena Kwansah-Aidoo was inaugurated in August 2024, at which the NMC chairman, Yaw Boadu-Ayeboafoh, urged the corporation not to allow itself to be used as a receptacle for falsehood and restated the commission’s stated commitment to shielding state media from undue political influence. The status of that board, like those of other state entities, was drawn into question by the new administration’s dissolution of statutory boards in January 2025. In September 2025 the long-serving Managing Director, Martin Adu-Owusu, proceeded on leave ahead of early retirement on health grounds after nearly three decades at the corporation, and an Interim Management Committee took over day-to-day leadership. The committee is chaired by board member Kwesi Adjei Kersi, a former Graphic Communications Group managing director, with fellow board member Charity Binka as deputy chair, and was mandated to run the corporation until the NMC appoints a substantive Managing Director. No public record of a substantive appointment was identified in this review, and the committee remained in charge into 2026.

Source of funding and budget

NTC is structured to fund itself through commercial revenue, chiefly advertising and newspaper sales, rather than through a routine state subvention, the feature that distinguishes Ghana’s two state publishers from the directly funded broadcaster and news agency. According to government data cited in the State Media Monitor review, the corporation recorded a turnover of about GHS 12.35 million in 2019 and revenue of roughly GHS 11.97 million in 2020, around 74% of which came from advertising; no newer audited financial statements were identified in publicly accessible sources. The commercial model has proven fragile.

At the August 2024 board inauguration the then Managing Director, Martin Adu-Owusu, said NTC was operating solely on internally generated funds, with requests for government recapitalisation having been unsuccessful, and reported that the corporation had stopped running its roughly two-decade-old web offset printing machine in November 2020 and had since outsourced printing while working to acquire a replacement. The strained finances of the print business have remained a recurring theme, and the interim leadership has spoken candidly to staff about the corporation’s difficulties and the shared stake in its survival.

Editorial independence

The State Media Monitor review finds that NTC’s state ownership and its NMC- and executive-linked appointment structure leave it vulnerable to government influence, and that its titles broadly reflect government perspectives. As with the larger Graphic group, the commercial model gives NTC’s newsrooms more day-to-day operating latitude than a directly subvention-funded state body, but the appointment structure and the absence of binding statutory guarantees of editorial independence leave the corporation exposed to political influence. The NMC’s public charge to the 2024 board (that the corporation should not be used as a receptacle for falsehood) reflects a standing concern that state newspapers can be turned to political ends.

These conditions place NTC in the Captured Public/State-Managed (CaPu) category, the same tier as the Graphic group and distinct from the State-Controlled broadcaster and news agency. NTC is a commercially funded, market-facing publisher rather than a directly funded arm of government, but its state ownership, NMC- and executive-linked appointments and government-aligned editorial posture mark it as captured rather than independent: indeed, the State Media Monitor typology uses NTC as a defining example of the model.

The classification is unchanged from 2022, and the turbulence of the review period does not alter it. The departure of a long-serving Managing Director, the move to interim management and the continuing financial strain are developments in leadership and finances that play out within the CaPu profile: they do not convert NTC into a directly funded state organ, since it remains commercially structured, nor do they move it toward independence, since its governance remains wholly state-appointed and its commercial pressures, if anything, deepen its dependence on state support. The CaPu classification continues to apply for 2026.

AI and digital policy

No NTC-specific published policy on AI-generated content, synthetic-media disclosure, or content-provenance standards such as C2PA was identified. The corporation maintains online portals for its titles, but no sector-specific framework governing AI-generated or synthetic news content in Ghana’s state media was identified.

May 2026