Emmanuel Y. Kortu My view on the Liberian Media.
The media play a very important role in maintaining a national democracy and championing national development.
Arguably the media role in consolidating development and democracy becomes even more important in developing country like Liberia. The media in Liberia continues to perform critical role in the consolidation of democracy and development as it perform its watchdog role in the society. The media in Liberia has been used to educate and inform the general public about issue of national interest.
For example in the 2014 Ebola outbreak the media was used to educate the public about the preventive measures which helps the citizenry to have a clear idea of what was happening.
Since the coming into force of the current democratic arrangement, journalists have ensured that information is provided to the citizens to help them analyse the activities of the government, businesses and other national interest issues.
Despite the effort made by the media, there are challenges that the Liberian media face that need to be solved in order to improve the Liberian Media.
Some of the strategies that can help improve the media sector in Liberia are;
Providing training for media practitioners
Most of the people in the Liberian media have limited knowledge on the profession in which they find themselves. So to help develop this sector, there must be regular training exercises in the form of Seminars and workshops aim at increasing the knowledge of media professionals in the areas of the ethics of the profession and how to report on critical national issues.
Also the world is advancing in terms of technology, the media practitioners must be trained on the trend of the new media, that is social media and devices that can be used to access and disseminating information.
Continues education in the media will help in the development of the Liberia media.
Responsible media interaction and increase trust must be fostered at all levels of the Liberian society. A key focus of the development of the Liberian media must be education in media literacy, targeted not only at journalists but at government and the general public.
Also there must be Monitoring of the media, fostering an improved and empowered communications environment
Monitoring in this stage may include systems-wide measures including development of an enabling regulatory framework and increased access to information. In the monitoring process, there must be rules and guidelines setup by the press union of Liberia that all media institutions must observed. That is there must be a check and balance system in the media.
Moreover the Ownership of media institutions in Liberia must be review.
The polarization of the Liberian media must be critically look at. Most of the media institutions in Liberia are owned by politicians, this is making it difficult for the media to be independent from the people it covers. This has forced many media practitioners to be bias in their analysis because they are force to work in the interest of the owners of the media house rather than the society. The ownership of media institutions play a key role in the development of the Liberian media.
