By Grace Q. Bryant
Gbarpolu County Senator Amara Konneh says no system has worked here and that nothing is working currently in Liberia.
“I came down today to tell you that nothing works in our country. Every sector, nothing is working! The sewage system is bad. All the water around here cannot figure out how to collect the garbage to keep our people health. It’s not working!” the former finance Minister expressed.
He reiterated that nothing in Liberia and highlighting challenges in the Liberian media, Konneh charged journalists to position themselves and make things work differently.
Senator Konneh spoke over the weekend at the Launching ceremony of the EU-funded- 36-months Liberia Empowerment Project (LMEP) held in Monrovia.
According to Senator, The Liberian media has never been the same since the war and is still struggling adding, “We appreciate the support from the EU for this project and hope that the government will also spend some time to support it. To build our country for the next 20 years, we must do things differently.”
Senator Konneh told the Liberian media to begin to program and position themselves to do what was done by himself in the election to help to keep elections credible expressing, “The media here is struggling because of the event of social media, which has changed news reporting. Newspapers are facing existential threats from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Positioning yourself is the key to not becoming obscure.”
Senator Konneh further that the media sector does not make enough money to meet their needs, “So you are in a dilemma here.”
Meanwhile, Internews Country Director, Lien Bach, revealed that they have established the first fully functional checking desk in Liberia which is still being run by our local business partners.
According to Lien, their online catching is the first context-specific training menu or facts checking and that the manual is disclosing, “We have four entries.”
She disclosed that the Liberia Media and Power Project will build on the lessons learned from these activities and more, including developing new approaches to enhance freedom of expression by strengthening media professionalism, “This project will complement the current USAID Media activity at the CWU Content Syndication.”
“Thank you for emphasizing the importance of building strong relationships with our key partners in the Media project, government, civil society, and other stakeholders. This collaboration will help us establish a sustainable and accountable media aspect,” she praised previous speakers.
The Liberian implementing partners of the project are the Center for Media Studies and Peace Building, Messengers of Peace- Liberia; JournalRage; Local Voices Liberia; Publishers Association of Liberia, and collaborating universities which are University of Liberia, AME University, United Methodist University, MediaAid Foundation and Media Aid Foundation (Peter Quaqua School of Journalism).
While the ultimate goal of the project is to contribute to the enhancement of democratic governance in Liberia with focus on interconnected initiatives, including creating a conducive environment for free expression of opinions, improving the professionalism of the media, and collaborating with relevant statutory bodies such as the Human Rights Commission
The program aims to impact practicing journalists and aspiring students alike, which explains the presence of representatives from universities and schools that teach journalism. By the end of the 36-month project, LMEP hopes to have fostered a stronger relationship between the media and civil society in Liberia, ultimately leading to better democratic governance.
The project has three primary objectives with the first to educate people and combat the spread of misinformation and fake news through various channels while the partners will lead efforts to achieve this objective.
The second objective is to improve human rights and democratic accountability and to accomplish this, Message of Peace will collaborate with independent human rights organizations and the Executive Director of Message of Peace, is working closely with the independent Memorized Commission to organize forums on human rights and democratic accountability across the country.
Internews will also work with the Human Rights Commission on specialized reporting on sexual minority issues with the hope of including these issues as part of mainstream human rights concerns in Liberia.
The final objective is to create an enabling environment where journalists and other professionals can work without significant harassment while developing innovative approaches to accessing public information and all three objectives are designed with the assumption that media professionals have the capacity and ability to respond to misinformation and are provided opportunities to engage in accountable reporting.
