What was intended to be a cordial tête-à-tête between Presidential Press Secretary Kula Fofana and media executives on Thursday, June 20, turned sour when several newspaper publishers stormed out of the meeting over policy pronouncements that potentially hinder the effective coverage of the Executive Mansion.
The meeting, held at the Bella Casa Hotel, was a follow-up from a previous meeting held on May 31st, hosted by the Ministry of Information, Cultural Affairs and Tourism (MICAT) at the Corina Hotel, in which several journalists and media executives had expressed frustration over Madam Fofana's conduct as Press Secretary. A key outcome of the earlier meeting was that the MICAT Minister, Jerolinmek Piah, promised that Fofana would avail herself subsequently to address any concerns raised against her and her office.
At the meeting presided over by Fofana, she started off reassuring reporters and media executives that she and her team value the partnership with the media in helping to move the country forward.
Meanwhile, media managers, owners, and reporters in attendance highlighted three key issues affecting their effective coverage of the Liberian presidency, hoping that Fofana would take steps to address them.
The first two appear to be new requirements introduced under the Boakai administration. First, all individual journalists desirous of covering the Executive Mansion first obtain police clearance as part of their accreditation process. Previously, a journalist only needed an official letter of accreditation from his or her media outlet, signed by an editor or publisher. From the perspective of the Ministry of State, which houses the office of the President, including the Press Secretary, there is a need for some level of security clearance for all media personnel wishing to cover the President of Liberia. Such security clearance could prove valuable for journalists when foreign leaders visit the Liberian President, having access to both the President and his guests.
Fofana responded that the issue of security clearance for journalists is not an issue that she can independently address, since this is a security issue and the relevant officials need to weigh in.
The second requirement is more of an institutional accreditation. The Executive Mansion is now requiring all media institutions to present valid business registration and tax clearance certificates in order for their respective journalists to be allowed to cover the Presidency.
While the police clearance requirement for individual journalists may have become a reasonable proposition once fully explained to some, the institutional requirement raised the ire of media executives to the level that many announced that they had already opted out of covering the Executive Mansion.
"Some of us don't send our reporters to cover the Executive Mansion," said Sam Dean, publisher of the Independent newspaper. His statement was echoed by Othello Garblah, publisher of the New Dawn newspaper and president of the Publishers Association of Liberia (PAL).
The Publishers Association, a business organization that advocates and explores business opportunities for the viability of printed news media, comprises more than 20 newspapers in its membership. Some members of the PAL expressed concern that such stringent requirements for accreditation of individual journalists and media institutions could potentially be weaponized against independent media, especially those perceived to be "not so friendly" with the ruling administration.
Information Minister Piah, who came into the meeting much later, tried to allay any fears of a potential threat against the media by these new requirements. "The Boakai administration has no intention of [muzzling] the press, you all know that," he said.
But Lyndon Ponnie, publisher of the Concord Times, recalled the days of President Charles Taylor when similar accreditation requirements for independent media were used to outrightly block certain media outlets from operating at all. According to him, these kinds of requirements reignite fears of some of the persecution some media outlets went through during that time.
Ponnie's concerns are not far-fetched. During the Weah administration, Punch FM, a radio station founded by Patrick Honnah, was denied a broadcast spectrum license even though he met all the legal and financial requirements. Honnah, who was branded by the Weah administration as an "opposition journalist", eventually had to find jobs in public relations in order to survive. Interestingly, Honnah is now a commissioner at the Liberia Telecommunications Authority (LTA), the key agency that maliciously stalled his broadcast spectrum application.
The third concern raised by media executives was an issue that has lingered for nearly a decade so far. Since the final term of the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf presidency, the Executive Mansion has published advertisements on its website at no cost to advertisers. This action has resulted in a steady decline in newspaper advertising revenue, forcing some newspapers out of business, while others struggle to survive.
When George Manneh Weah became President of Liberia, the Publishers Association raised concern about the issue and urged him to halt all advertising activity on the Executive Mansion website. His initial response was, "That's how we met it and we have no intention of stopping it."
Later on, to Weah's credit, the administrators of the Executive Mansion website started to require all advertisers to publish their ads in at least one newspaper and show proof of publication (such as a snapshot of the page of the newspaper in which the ad was published), before the advertisement would be published on the website. While this measure offered a dim ray of hope for newspapers, publishers believe that nothing short of a total abolishment of advertising on the Executive Mansion website is good enough.
In response, Kula Fofana appeared to use the same line as the Weah administration: "That's how we met it". This raised the ire of publishers to an unprecedented level, causing Garblah, Dean, and several other publishers to walk out of the meeting. As far as they were concerned, by all three measures, the Executive Mansion had effectively shut itself off to independent media and there was no need to spend another minute in that meeting.
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Fofana, however, added that the advertising issue would have to be discussed at a higher level before any decision could be made about whether or not to keep it. She explained that the advertisements on the government's website serve to inform Liberians in the diaspora about opportunities in Liberia.
"That's our job," said Bai Best, managing director of the Liberian Observer Corporation, which publishes the Daily Observer newspaper and website. "If people want to advertise, let them come to us. The Executive Mansion should not be in the business of advertising. It's even more hurtful to our businesses that the Executive Mansion is doing it for free, and this needs to stop."
President Boakai took the helm of national leadership with a huge pile of media debt left over by his predecessor, former President George Manneh Weah. With so much debt owed to media outlets by the government with no resolution in sight, media owners see it as a despicable attack against independent journalism at a time when Boakai has declared that the conduct of his administration would "not be business as usual."
Fofana then urged the aggrieved media outlets to write an official letter expressing their grievances about the advertising issue in order for the Boakai administration to take the matter into consideration.
