By Isaac Massaquoi
The other day somebody asked for my views on the coverage of the Ebola outbreak in the Mano River Union by the Western media - by Western media, he actually meant the BBC, CNN, RFI, Aljazeera and the major wire services, like Reuters, the French news agency, AFP and Associated Press, AP. He wanted a quick quote from me for a story he was writing on the issue, for an international news agency. I obliged a few lines and I suppose it worked well for his story. But I felt a burning desire to say more to his international audience on the issue.
I am not sure I would have said anything new, but adding my views to this age old debate once again would strengthen the foundation of the people on whose side I stand. But as it is with the news, time, space and the political-economy of the business always conspire against sources wanting to make a complete point in full context. Well not only sources. Even journalists are many times frustrated they are not permitted by the same conspiracy from telling the whole story. It's not much use going into the very complex debate around this conspiracy. I need to move quickly to where I am going today.
So a young man who has been living in the United States since the war in this country, called his elder sister in Freetown recently. He was shouting down the line, telling the lady to pack up and leave Sierra Leone. "Go to any country in West Africa, I will pay", he said. The lady tried in vain to have a say on the issue but his brother, like a military commander having to abandon his base under fire from the enemy, pressed on.
During the frantic order to leave, the brother indicated that what he had seen on TV about the Ebola situation in Sierra Leone, was so scary that his sister must get out by the next available means of transport. So, as you read this, keep in mind the fact that the young man's perception of what was happening with the Ebola attack on Sierra Leone came from what he saw on TV. Also keep in mind my point about the inability of both the source and the journalist to tell the whole story in full context because of the conspiracy I referred to with the players in that conspiracy being, time, space and the political-economy of the media.
In the early days of Ernest Bai Koroma's presidency, he spoke a lot about his, almost messianic zeal to re-brand Sierra Leone - to give Brand Sierra Leone a fresh look and feel at home and abroad.
Koroma took over from an exhausted SLPP government which despite doing well to end the war, had become arrogant and out of touch with the people. They even lost touch with their own grassroots supporters and were already in danger of being thrown out of power by the time they went to their Ground Zero - Makeni, for their party convention where extreme leftists in the party were finally told they could leave if they weren't happy with the vested interests running things in the SLPP at that time. They left.
So yes, The SLPP built democratic institutions and attempted to put the economy back on the rails, Sierra Leone was beginning to be studied by credible international bodies as a model for countries recovering from wars as horrendous as Foday Sankoh's mad effort to seize power.
But there was an awful lot of work still to do when Koroma was elected. He proclaimed a program of breathing a new life into our Sierra Leoneaness and then attract investors to the new Sierra Leone. The odd critics were here and there but the nation was largely ready to give the new president a chance.
The re-branding project itself was not clearly defined and was often misunderstood by even some officials. One minister who had just been posted to a very sensitive ministry following a snap reshuffle, told his close friend, his main assignment there was to "re-brand this place". But as it is with such political slogans, they quickly become red meat for opposition politicians and hacks.
Appointing journalists as attaches in our diplomatic missions was part of that effort. We can argue about the impact some of them have made in the re-branding project. We can even say that some of the spin doctors simply went to sleep once they landed at their locations, waking up sporadically to take part in the intemperate political arguments back home. But a handful of them have done very well.
The Sierra Leone Conference on Transformation and Development which I played a role in, was again widely attacked particularly by opposition forces but it went a long way to chart a future course for Sierra Leone as a decent, middle income democracy playing its role in the world. But see where we are right now. Ebola crept upon us from neighbouring Guinea early this year and all our growth prospects are collapsing one after the other.
Once again, the UN, the British and a all those who helped us defeat Foday Sankoh are coming back to help us bring down Ebola. They left this country with the news of progress being made here in all areas, now they are returning with grim statistics about death and destruction of our economy. It's beginning to look like the late 90s all over again but without armed combat on our streets.
Now, more than any other time in our history a Sierra Leone passport has become one of the most feared documents around, even airport cargo staff at Brussels airport, I understand are refusing to carry luggage from Sierra Leone for fear of catching Ebola. Our national footballers, most of whom live and work in Europe are being thrown into quarantine for visiting the continent. We have become a pariah that nobody wants to touch even with a 10-feet barge pole. What's going on?
So let's go back to that guy who after watching TV decided Sierra Leone was a lost cause and asked his sister to leave and the disappointment of journalists and their sources at not being able to tell the full story of Ebola in the MRU and in proper context because of the factors that conspire to produce the kind of stories we see on our TV screens about our country.
Here's what I said to the person who asked for my views on how the Western media was covering the Ebola outbreak: The coverage is too formulaic, it has followed a pattern of coverage established since apartheid, through the rebel wars in Africa, particularly the Rwandan genocide and its immediate aftermath and now the Ebola crisis.
Western journalists fly into an already developed situation and in the short time they have on ground, they attempt to tell the story in two to three minutes of hourly live interviews that keeps them tied to their satellite equipment instead of seeking out fresh perspectives.
In fact, because their audiences are almost always not directly affected by such wars and other natural disasters, they make a conscious effort not to give too complex a background to stories from abroad. So a simplistic story that focuses on the drama around failing characters and systems is told or a humanitarian angle that invites the people of the rich world to take pity on poor and dying Africans is told accompanied by the gory details of dead bodies and slums with a Western NGO worker commenting on the situation. It is those kinds of stories that convinced the US-based Sierra Leonean I introduced you to earlier that it was time for his sister to leave. It's that kind of reporting on global media that has seriously damaged brand Sierra Leone and made Koroma's job of re-branding this country even more difficult, if not totally impossible.
I do not question the factual and professional foundation of these type of stories, it's the selection and emphasis on certain aspects of a big picture, the conclusions drawn on the basis of those selections and the repetitive nature of the 24 hour news machine that reinforces those stereotypes that end up scaring our US-based Sierra Leonean brother to death.
It will not be easy to start a second re-branding of Sierra Leone. That effort will go on long after Ernest Koroma retires in 2017. But it's his job to begin the process. It must involve all the best people this nation can boast of and those foreigners who feel some passion for Africa and Sierra Leone in particular. So I am taking about people like Isha Sesay, Idris Elba, Isaiah Washington, Peter Penfold, Rajiv Bendre and those kinds of people, including a handful of others at home.
It will be an expensive, painstaking effort that must never be crafted along the partisan lines that we are so used to here. The message must be clear, simple and unambiguous. We must take nothing for granted and must not consider it a propaganda drive for the benefit of any political party.
Ebola would be defeated, I hope soon. Let's start planning for Brand Sierra Leone now. Good Luck!
© Politico 28/10/14
