The Center for Media Studies and Peace-Building and its partners on Monday, May 31, 2021 hosted a Freedom of Information (FOI) roundtable with journalists and government information officers in Monrovia.
It is the first of three regional Freedom of Information (FOI) relationship-building roundtables with twenty-five (25) Freedom of Information Story Grant Fellows, and about 25 Public and County Information Officers.
The roundtable, held under the theme, “Building Network to Increase Demand for FOI Use”, was primarily organized to encourage relationship building between public information officers and journalists to bridge bottlenecks in accessing public information.
This event (FOI roundtable) forms part of an ongoing Liberia Media Initiative (LMI) project, jointly implemented by CEMESP, Internews, the Local Voices Liberia, and co-funded by the European Union.
CEMESP’s Executive Director, Malcolm Joseph, said the roundtable was a way of introducing FOI fellows to the county and public information officers for the purpose of initiating relationship building and enhancing networks.
According to him, his institution will work with the Independent Information Commission (IIC) under the EU support project to hold two additional Freedom of Information roundtables to enhance the quality of Liberian journalism.
The keynote speaker, who is the Commissioner for the Independent Information Commission, spoke of the need to collaborate with all sectors of society to achieve the mandate of the commission.
Cllr. Bedal Wla Freeman said the IIC is functionally weak due to low funding and lack of political will to comply with information requests on the part of some officials and public entities.
He called for assistance from donors and other partners to address the huge capacity gap at his commission.
The European Union Ambassador to Liberia, who attended the event, said he was happy to form part of such an event supported by the nations of Europe.
Ambassador Laurent Delahousse reminded journalists of their duty to be careful of falsehood and fetch out facts to make news content.
Said Ambassador Delahousse, “Your role is so important in today’s world, where people all have a cellphone, access to radio, some have access to TV and written media….”
He said there is so much information that journalists need guardians to separate the true, fake and manipulated news.
The EU ambassador added it was necessary to checkmate government, but all must do so with facts, noting that the level of use of the Liberian Freedom of Information law was “unacceptable”, urging the Independent Information Commission to act.
For his part, Internews Liberia Project Director, Samukai Konneh, explained that the Roundtable with PIOs, CIOs and journalists was meant to achieve the key deliverable of harnessing existing knowledge towards building mutually rewarding networks that will increase the demand and use of Liberia’s FOI law to increasing trust in governance and encourage citizens’ participation.
“Three years ago, in a previous project, Internews trained more than 25 Liberian journalists in utilizing the FOI law for effective and responsible reporting – on the backdrop of an IIC report that the media was the least user of the FOI law. Isn’t that strange? How can the media not use the FOI law?” Samukai asked.
He said it is important to discuss bottlenecks imposed by the FOI law on itself; “and we will build relationships and networks that will begin to challenge these inherent bottlenecks to ease access to public information”.
Monday’s event, which was held at the Corina Hotel, Monrovia, also brought together the President of the West African Journalists Association, Peter Quaqua; Facia Harris, Director of Sensitization and Outreach, Independent Information Commission (IIC); and IIC Executive Director, Emmanuel Howe.
There were presentations on the review mechanism of the FOI Law, moderated by Media Development specialist, Maureen Sieh.
As part of the on-going Liberia Media Initiative project, CEMESP will hold two other roundtables with its 25 FOI fellows and government information officers outside of Monrovia.