Since I’ve been on the board of the Independent Media Commission, I have had to answer two questions from people who know me all over the country. People have always asked me why is it that we (IMC) have granted a license to operate a newspaper or radio station to anybody who has turned up at the IMC to make a request. The second: whenever a media organisation “disappoints” a member of the audience in terms of the quality and professionalism of their output, people have asked me, “is this what you teach people at Fourah Bay College?”
I am fed up taking these questions but there’s no way to stop them. Most of the people who ask me are friends who would never be shy to ask me anything. There are others who can’t get to me because we don’t usually meet and others just wouldn’t speak to me because of what we stand for in society. They would speak in the ears of the deaf man’s son, so that he hears. To the latter group I say, I hear every bit of it. In fact very recently, a politician friend of mine told one of my students that I am the man behind the news agenda at CTN which, according to him, is unfavourable to the APC. My student told him clearly that I had no hands in what that news production house does.
I visit CTN newsroom every day, sometimes on my way to class, but I have never been to any of their production meetings let alone decide what to do or even write a news item for them. CTN has a lot of qualified professionals to handle their editorial policy. My politician friend should be uncomfortable that I have found out what he really thinks about me; from underneath that facade of Fourah Bay College friendship in the 1990s he puts forward every time we meet. I just like to assure him that, no hard feelings – just putting things right.
Back to those two questions. I would encourage every person interested to go to the IMC and look at our papers to see how such decisions are reached and the kinds of information that make them possible within certain procedures. I will hang it there. I am now doing a major work on media regulation in Sierra Leone, which will be published when I would have left the IMC in another two years.
The second question which is what we teach students at the Mass Communication Department at FBC: My answer is that more than 90% of the people in active journalism today, in other words those you hear on radio and read in newspapers were never students of our Mass Communication School. They probable attended other great schools and they don’t even need to come to FBC to be where they are. So from that perspective, I cannot speak for them. And even those who are graduates of our School have found themselves in some organisations where the editorial policies are rigid and are definitely tilted in ways no truly professional journalists can understand. The issue then becomes sticking to what you were told in class at FBC or putting food on the table for your family. Which one is imperative?
Let’s try to understand what has happened to media all over the world and Sierra Leone in particular because as you can see from the headline to this piece, things are happening in a roundabout manner.
I have to start by talking about the regulatory environment. In the last 30 years the telecommunication industry has been deregulated worldwide and this has brought about significant growth in the sector. The world has witnessed the rise of global TV networks that know no political boundaries, real, artificial or imaginary. Their influence on politics, economics, international relations and the socio-cultural outlook of nations from the Americas to Asia and the Arab World is simply phenomenal. African governments that were very reluctant to allow the “unequal flow” of information from north to south during the days of the New World Information and Communication debate can only stand-by now and watch.
So yes technology has changed the situation dramatically but the opening up of the regulatory space by governments is a major factor in this drive.
Radio
From just one radio station – the SLBS up and till the mid 90s, Sierra Leone today has more than forty-five radio stations dotted across the country. In each of the country’s 12 administrative districts, there is at least one radio station that broadcasts for about eight hours a day. It means therefore that a considerable number of media workers armed with the latest technology are out there broadcasting something. Going back to my point in the beginning, in almost all these stations, there are no graduates of journalism or communication on hand. Yes the media workers in those places might have attended many training workshops. There are some who’ve been trained in the Mecca of broadcasting – The BBC – or by personnel from that institution that are now doing well as can be noticed from their output. But for the greater majority - those that attend such training programmes for per diem sakes, they remain the same people.
Listen to many of our radio stations and notice how similar and repetitive the program formats are. It’s basically one station copying from the other. The sports programmes and talk shows are the most interesting.
Newspapers
There’s been a huge jump in the number of newspapers operating in Freetown and only a handful is able to penetrate into the provincial headquarters at least. Only those papers that are able to organize their own distribution network have made it. For others it could take up to two days to reach some districts and even that depends on some obliging passenger on a road transport bus.
There are no independent distribution agencies in Sierra Leone like in many other countries. About fifteen newspapers are published daily covering mostly political stories in Freetown. Publishing daily means filling about twelve or so pages every day. That is serious business.
Online Publications
The last time I checked, there were at least eight active Sierra Leone newspapers published online from abroad. Just to be clear many newspapers in Freetown have on-line editions which are basically on-line versions of what we buy from the newsstands. Those Sierra Leone online newspapers have added a bit of spice to the country’s media landscape. But they represent a headache in terms of professionalism and ethics which I will deal with soon.
Here is what we are faced with today in the media sector in Sierra Leone: Radio and TV broadcast equipment is cheap and portable; mobile phones, digital recorders, all kinds of editing software and computers have become key instruments in newsgathering and program-making; the regulatory environment makes it possible for any determined individual or group of people to save up on lunch money and within a year start a radio station.
Registering a newspaper in Sierra Leone starts with getting some office space, registering a business which takes about two days and applying to the IMC. The whole process lasts for no more than a month from the day the application reaches the IMC; and the registration fee is less than Le 500,000 (a little over $ 100) and because free expression is a fundamental human right, it has be an extremely serious matter to prevent the IMC from issuing a license. This explains why there are so many newspapers around.
The online publications are basically an attempt by most Sierra Leonean journalists who fled the country during the war, to stay in touch with the home country and serve the huge Sierra Leone Diaspora. But they present a serious challenge in terms of regulation. Sometimes when I read their publications, I ask myself a lot of question about what drives them. Some have no respect for professionalism; they tear people’s reputation to shreds from the safety of London, Paris, Washington and so on. The IMC Act and its Code of Practice are powerless against them. And unlike the recent past, many Sierra Leoneans are now reading these sites which are increasingly being linked to the popular social networking site – Facebook.
So the technology is available, the laws allow the setting-up of media groups but the manpower operating this technology that has revolutionised broadcasting is in the hands of mostly untrained minds, motivated by issues other than professional journalism. The technological tail will continue to wag the journalistic dog in Sierra Leone for the foreseeable future. If there are other tails wagging the journalistic dog, please let me know.
