About the MSI
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IREX designed the MSI to measure the strength and viability of any country's media sector. The MSI considers all the factors that contribute to a media system—the quality of journalism, effectiveness of management, the legal environment supporting freedom of the press, and more—to arrive at scores on a scale ranging between 0 and 4. These scores represent the strength of the media sector components and can be analyzed over time to chart progress (or regression) within a country. Additionally, countries or regions may be compared to one another. IREX currently conducts the MSI in 80 countries, and began studying Africa in 2006.
MSI Overview [8] | Africa [9] | Asia [10] | Europe & Eurasia [11] | Middle East & North Africa [12]
MSI Methodology [13]
Download Complete Liberia Chapter (PDF): 2012 [14] | 2010 [15] | 2009 [16] | 2008 [17]
MSI Liberia – 2012 Introduction
Overall Country Score: 2.27
In October 2011, Liberians went to the polls in their second consecutive multi-party democratic voting to elect a president and legislators. The House of Representatives and Senate had wide-ranging changes as a result of the vote, with only one of the 15 senators retaining his seat and about 60 percent of house members failing to get re-elected. The presidential vote went to a run-off, which was boycotted by the opposition Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) party on allegations of fraud, although all local and international observers gave the process a clean bill of health. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was returned to power, with about 90 percent of the run-off ballots.
Stability is set to continue with the re-election of President Sirleaf, but new challenges are emerging and the government is being dogged continuously by sustained allegations of systematic and personal corruption in its ranks. The president has been criticized consistently for nepotism in the appointment of her sons and other relatives to influential and financially lucrative positions in the state bureaucracy. The 2012 Liberia Corruption Perception Index by a local NGO, the Action for Genuine Democratic Alternative (Agenda), found that most people in Liberia lack confidence in the police and judiciary because the two institutions are perceived as corrupt. More than six years after coming to power, President Sirleaf has not successfully prosecuted anyone for corruption in the public sector, although numerous audit reports from the government’s General Auditing Commission have pointed to a massive level of graft in several government agencies.
Liberia’s economic growth prospects are promising, especially in light of the discovery of a significant deposit of offshore crude oil. The national budget has grown incrementally, with the government moving to a Medium-Term Expenditure Framework, an instrument that promotes cooperation across government agencies as well as fiscal planning for longer than the immediate year. However, there has been a huge public outcry that legislators are self-serving with the national wealth. Protestors have accused lawmakers of using the budgeting process to allocate money for personal use.
The media, on the other hand, continue to make progress towards professionalism and sustainability. Performing in outstanding fashion during the 2011 elections in Liberia, the media sector is considerably stronger and more influential than it was a few years ago. This progress notwithstanding, challenges and threats to media independence remain.
Liberia made a strong showing in the 2012 MSI study, consistent with the small but steady annual increases in average from 2008 (2.04 that year) to the present. Each of the five objectives has improved in that time period. The panelists attributed the progress to the successful elections and the government’s ascension to the Declaration of Table Mountain, which seeks to decriminalize libel, combat anti-free speech laws, and provide an enabling environment for media prosperity.
The Liberia study was coordinated by, and conducted in partnership with, the Liberia Media Center, Monrovia.