MONROVIA, 20 Oct 2003 (IRIN) - To be ready for his live breakfast show "Infomix," radio presenter Adolphus Taylor has to sleep overnight at the offices of the state-run Liberian Broadcasting System (LBS).
The generator cranks into action at 6.00 am, Taylor is on the air 30 minutes later, producing as well as presenting for a ramshackle studio. He rummages for the right casette and improvises cheerfully when he puts on the wrong one.
Early morning travel from his home in Monrovia is still unsafe in this country which is gradually emerging from the horrors of civil war.
LBS has no vehicle to pick him up. "Once the courtyard here was flooded with cars and someone could come to pick me up at 04.00 GMT," Taylor told IRIN.
"But that was before we were plunged into the nightmare of 14 years of war," he added.
The war ended, at least officially, on 18 August, after former president Charles Taylor was forced by international pressure and an intense rebel advance on Monrovia, to resign and go to exile in Nigeria.
The rebels, the remnants of Taylor's government and other interest groups agreed that an interim administration headed by businessman Gyude Bryant, should lead Liberia to fresh elections in 2005. And Bryant took power last week under the protection of a UN peacekeeping force that will eventually number 15,000 troops.
Damaged transmitters and no pay for two years
Now LBS journalists are trying to pick up the pieces. But the state broadcaster is in bad shape. It broadcasts to Monrovia on FM from a ramshackle studio in the eastern suburb of Paynesville, but lacks a working short-wave transmitter to reach the whole country. And its staff have not been paid for more than two years.
Across town, Radio Veritas which is a few minute’s walk from the United States Embassy, still shows signs of the effects of a 19 July mortar attack. Ledger Hood, who runs the station for the Roman Catholic church, told IRIN that damage from the shelling took Veritas off air for a month.
Transmission resumed in August, but the station is yet to pay a US $7,000 bill for repairs on its short-wave antenna, which was hit by mortar fire.
Other independent stations were simply shut down by former president Taylor, who dominated the airwaves with the radio stations of his privately own Liberian Communications Network (LCN).
Star Radio, one of his first victims in Monrovia, was taken off the air in March 2000. And in June this year, Taylor shut own another six local radio stations in central Liberia as rebels fought their way into the capital's northern suburbs. They included Y-FM, Bright FM, Jet 89.9, The Voice of Kakata, and the Voice of YMCA.
But the crackdown started well before then in the interior as rebels took up arms again following Taylor's election as president in 1997. The few broadcasters that survived upcountry, such as LOVE FM in Buchanan, were directly backed by the president.
The rebel attack on Monrovia earlier this year did not just damage Radio Veritas.
The Liberia Institute of Journalism, was forced to put its training programmes on hold after gunmen looted its computers.
And Talking Drum Studios (TDS), which trains radio journalists and produces programmes that promote social harmony, had its studios on Bushrod Island looted bare. The operation which is run by the US-based NGO Search for Common Ground, now produces just four programmes a week for broadcast by local stations instead of the 11 which it distributed previously.
"We were in the battle zone," Talking Drum technical manager Paul Seidi said. "The looters hit the studio first, removing computers, mixers and monitors. Then they targeted the storeroom and stripped offices of furniture.
The total losses came to around $150,000," he told IRIN.
Meanwhile, many journalists found themselves on the run. In June, 25 journalists working in Monrovia were displaced from their homes by fighting. Others were robbed, abducted and tortured by both government fighters and rebels of the Liberian United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), according to the Media Foundation of West Africa (MFWA).
"Journalists and human rights activists in Monrovia have been the worst victims of what appears to be the targeted and systematic looting, arson and rape of residents caught up in the raging conflict," Professor Kwame Karikari, MFWA's Executive Director said at the time.
The media watchdog, Reporters sans Frontiers (RSF) placed Liberia 132nd out of the 166 countries listed in its latest world press freedom rankings, which were published on Monday. RSF said Liberia was one of three African countries which had fallen sharply in the rankings over the past 12 months.
The other two were Cote d'Ivoire (137th) and Guinea-Bissau (118th). RSF said war and serious political crises had impacted negatively on the press in all three countries.
"Green snake in the green grass"
LBS staff said during his six years in power, former president Taylor deliberately downgraded the state media, concentrating resources instead in his own LCN which included a television station, Kiss FM in Monrovia, and a chain of radios in the interior.
"A lot of people were cheated," Max Willie, LBS deputy director said. "Everything that held this country down is of Charles Taylor’s making. He was the green snake in the green grass."
Some LBS journalists who had not seen a wage packet for 30 months told IRIN that they generated an income by soliciting payments from the individuals and organisations they interviewed.
Not surprisingly, there was less bitterness against Taylor at Kiss FM, LCN's flagship station.
It has continued broadcasting since his departure two months ago, but nowe the entire future of LCN is in doubt. Its TV station has been off air for months and a pro-Taylor newspaper, The Patriot, has folded. An eviction notices have been served on Kiss, ordering the radio station to vacate its premises.
"Taylor was the chief sponsor of the entity," Kiss FM station manager Francis Dahn told IRIN. He made no apologies for running the former president's main mouthpiece for propaganda, saying times were difficult. "Every Liberian wanted a job," Dahn said.
He accepted that Kiss’s independence was always compromised, but denied that the station's reporters were pampered favourites. "Some guys were making as little as US $20 (a month). People misunderstood us to be the big guys with the big bucks, but it was not like that," he said.
Picking up the pieces
Many Liberian journalists temper their optimism for the future by referring to the past. Those interviewed told IRIN that harassment of the media did not begin with Taylor and was unlikely to end with his departure.
Samuel Doe, who seized power in a 1980 coup, but was brutally murdered 10 years later, introduced Decree 88A which gave the security forces a carte blanche to clamp down on critics. And before him, presidents William Tolbert and William Tubman both manipulated the media.
"We yearn for a time when you can say something and not be afraid of being picked up in the middle of the night," said Martin Browne, head of the independent radio station DC-101. His flagship programme "DC-Talk", a lively, hard-hitting discussion programme, was put on hold after a series of run-ins with Taylor's administration.
DC-101 closed down by the fighting in Monrovia, which lasted from June to early August, but its is now back on the air. However the station only broadcasts for 14 hours a day instead of the usual 18, and works off one generator rather than two. Monrovia has been without mains electricity for more than a decade.
Browne anticipates an easier ride from Bryant's newly installed administration "because this government is not there to perpetuate itself".
However he warns that the climate could become more difficult in the build-up to the 2005 elections as political parties and and their leaders try to manipulate the media as they jockey for positions. "It’s a problem of leadership, a problem of governance," he said.
However, for the time being, concerns about the future of broadcasting are overshadowed by more immediate priorities: paying staff, keeping the stations on the air and repairing damage inflicted by the fighting.
According to Browne, the priority for a commercial station like DC-101 it to "just maintain a presence". Advertising rates have dropped to US $3 for a sixty-second spot. He warned that the station would go under if the economy does not pick up soon.
Community radio stations must be independent
Other Liberian journalists want community radio stations to be given priority. But James Morlu, a former station manager at Star Radio, believes that community radios will only be the answer to Liberia's broadcasting woes if they are both independent and credible.
"Community radio stations are something to be looked into very carefully," he told IRIN. But he added: "If you don’t have a good foundation, righting the wrongs becomes harder."
According to Morlu, local radio stations allowed themselves to be manipulated easily by Taylor. "The same mistakes must not be made again. We want the media to be respected, but we have to know who is giving out information," he said.
In the late 1980s, USAID funded the creation of a Liberian Rural Communications Network (LRCN), but the network was devastated by the civil war. Other smaller stations emerged in recent years manned by young, inexperienced staff. But some of them reached sizeable audiences using home-made transmitters.
With the end of the war, the arrival of a large UN peacekeeping force and an army of aid agencies, there is much talk of a fresh boom in local media activity.
Vinnie Hodges, head of the Liberian Institute of Journalism, said the Institute wanted to set up its own radio station.
And Morlu said Star Radio, which was previously backed by the Swiss Hirondelle Foundation, could return to the airwaves after an absence of three years, if donors prove sympathetic.
Others talk about setting up new newspapers, but insist they need additional printing facilities in order to do this.
But money remains the main problem.
Jerome Daieh, Managing Editor of The News, an independent daily, said the biggest problem is average salaries of less than $20 a month. "Imagine you have a guy with a Masters degree coming to work here and he doesn’t even get enough to cover his transportation costs," he told IRIN.
Local journalists welcome the new interest being taken in the Liberian media by foreign donors and the likelihood of new training opportunities and equipment becoming available. But many warned strongly of the danger of being swamped by outside influences. They urged that the local media be empowered rather than marginalised.
Terence Sesay, president of the Press Union of Liberia (PUL) welcomed the idea of the United Nations setting its own radio station in Liberia, as happened in neighbouring Sierra Leone. He said such a station would not only help keep attention focused on Liberia, but would raise standards all round.
“A UN radio station will inspire other radio stations to do better because they will want to measure up to the same standard?, Sesay said. He drew parallels with the flagship role played by Star Radio between 1997 and its closure in 2000.
But PUL Secretary-General Winston Monboe, the Monrovia correspondent of Voice of America (VOA), was markedly more sceptical. He argued that Liberia that the UN and others should not come in to compete with existing players, but should work with what is already there.
“There is no way that any local media dare compete with a UN radio station that will have the finances, the logistics, the technology and the best you can think about?, said Monboe.
He called instead for investment in local broadcasting, urging the UN to help out stations that are already trying their best. “In the absence of that, there will be a brain drain as the best journalists go in search of greener pastures?, Monboe warned.
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