By: Mohamed M. Sesay
During the official launch of the State of the Media Report, the National Coordinator of the Media Reform Coordinating Group (MRCG) Dr. Francis Sowa expressed his dismay to galaxy of journalists that tremendous improvement has taken made in the media landscape of Sierra Leone but Media Poverty still remains a perennial and heinous issue across the country.
In his statement, Dr. Francis Sowa disclosed that the 2022 State of the Media Report was led by the Faculty of Communications, Media and Information Studies, University of Sierra Leone with support from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
He added that the Report presents critical overview of the prospects and challenges in the media freedom development in Sierra Leone, with a special focus on the 2018-2021 periods, as well as the role of the media in the country’s sustainable development pathways. Dr. Francis Sowa also intimated that the report is divided parts. He revealed that the report chiefly presents an overview of the media landscape during the period under review focusing on freedom, professionalism, performance, state-media-relations, regulations, management etc.
Dr. Sowa furthered that second aspect of the report presents academic articles on the role of the media and access to information in sustainable development. He acknowledged that Sierra Leone has in the past four years, made progress in the entire gamut of press freedom and freedom of expression ecosystem.
“Thanks largely to the historic repeal of part (V) of the Public Order Act, 1965 which contained the offences of Criminal and Seditious Libel. But the report notes that there are still some challenges relating to the safety and security of journalists, and investment in the media landscape as Media Poverty continues to affect the industry”, he said.
On his part, the Chairman of the Independent Media Commission who also doubles as the Chairman, Advisory Board of the MRCG Dr. Victor Massaquoi, expressed profound gratitude to the MRCG Secretariat for putting such report together . He confessed that the state of the Media Report is a critical piece of research designed to test many questions bordering on Human Rights, Freedom of Expression, Policy, Environment as well as the ease of during business in the media landscape of Sierra Leone.
Dr. Massaquoi confessed that the report launched is rich in terms of knowledge, information and rich in terms of its contents. Dr. Massaquoi continued that the State of the Media in Sierra Leone has drastically improved between 2018-2021. He justified that over the years; the Independent Media Commission has registered many Newspapers, Radio Stations and Television Stations and also assured that his commission would continue to register media houses across the country.
He assured that the major function of the media is still upheld in terms of information gathering, surveillance, correlation and interpretation of news, entertainment among others.
Dr. Massaquoi reiterated that the state of the media in Sierra Leone has changed drastically as a lot of things have happened for the media over the last five years. He added that Sierra Leone is doing very well in terms of Media Pluralism, Media Freedom, training opportunities for journalists, and media investment which all are predicated on the repeal of the Criminal Libel Law.
President Ahmed Sahid Nasralla, President of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ), acknowledged that despite the many gains in the media, there are still challenges of which conscious efforts are underway in ensuring that those challenges are averted. He also admonished that the welfare of journalists has been a perennial issues in Sierra Leone. He however, disclosed that SLAJ in collaboration with the Independent Media Commission has put measures in place which geared towards eradicating those challenges. He added that the IMC Act 2022 has put compliance or statutory obligations for media owners to adhere to such as the National Revenue Authority, NASSIT and Minimum Salary Wage for journalists.
“Things will continue to change especially when we have the political will of which SLAJ is now taking advantage of that political will. The Political will is what SLAJ has been lacking before but now there is a government that is willing to invest in the Media so that the Media will grow”, he said.
