The purpose of this paper was to study the connection between media freedom and media law, with focus on the Criminal Libel Law that was repealed in 2001.

Development journalism was the applied theory. It is a suitable method to investigate the role of journalist as nation builders, government partners, and agents of empowerment and also as watchdogs. This way the correlation between media freedom and media law could be highlighted in different aspects.

The study was handed out with anonymous surveys with respondents from a state-owned respective private press.  In total 21 journalists participated in the quantitative survey and three participated in the qualitative study. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were applied on a randomly selected sample of the journalistic population. The quantitative survey was structured as on a traditional standard survey. Thus, the questionnaire began with closed-ended questions followed by open-ended questions. The qualitative study was designed after the replies in the quantitative study.

The result shows that journalists perceive themselves as nation builders, agents of empowerment and watchdogs with the aim of promoting democracy and empowerment to the population. The majority did not think that media laws, such as the Criminal Libel Law, hindered their objectivity. However, the qualitative study showed that similar laws could have a deterrent effect. Furthermore, there was an equal belief on whether ownership affected journalism practice or not. The interviewees thought that Ghana had a free media, possibly even too free and needed to be monitored