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 Sierra Leone Chapter (PDF): 2012 [14] | 2010 [15] | 2009 [16] | 2008 [17] | 2006/7 [18]
MSI Sierra Leone - 2012 Introduction
Overall Country Score: 1.87
Sierra Leone has struggled with unemployment, drugs and small-arms trafficking, a high illiteracy rate, and endemic poverty; it is also still unstable politically. The media were partly blamed for actions—and inactions—that spurred the civil war that left more than 50,000 Sierra Leoneans dead and some 40,000 more as refugees. As a result, the media continue to suffer extremely low credibility.
A weak and untrained media gave rise to unprofessional and compromised news firms immediately after the war, and many have stubbornly remained. Journalists are largely untrained, operating within a poor market and an environment characterized by repressive laws that criminalize libel and do not embrace the freedom-of-information law. The media do not provide sufficient and objective information that sets an agenda, speaks truth to power, and holds leadership accountable. Though the media are free to uphold the fundamental objectives contained in the 1991 constitution and highlight the responsibility and accountability of the government to the people, the panelists believe the media have thus far failed to do so.
National elections on November 17, 2012, returned the incumbent president, Ernest Bai Koroma of the All People’s Congress (APC), to office with a first-round victory at 58 percent of the vote. His nearest challenger, former military ruler Julius Maada Bio of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), polled 37 percent, with eight smaller parties sharing the rest of the votes. APC and SLPP were the only two parties to win seats in parliament, with the APC holding a comfortable majority. Bio rejected the result, alleging ballot stuffing and other violations. Foreign observers did not go that far, though the EU noted that the APC used state resources to its advantage, including heightened media coverage.
On September 25, 2012, the Independent Media Commission (IMC) suspended the licenses of three newspapers—the Awareness Times, the Senator, and the Independent Observer—for one month and fined them each SLL 2 million ($450) because their editorial pages attacked each other after the former two papers dropped support for the SLPP and Bio. The IMC said it took action to stop all three editors from trading obscene language after two warnings. While the immediate cause of the newspapers’ suspension appears personal, the underlying cause was political.
The Independent Observer is the only newspaper to have complied with the ruling so far. The Awareness Times challenged its suspension before the High Court in Freetown, which will rule on the case in January 2013. Its publisher, Sylvia Blyden, departed the paper in December 2012 and announced her imminent return to politics. It is widely expected in Freetown that she will be given a job in the new APC government.
The Sierra Leone study was coordinated by, and conducted in partnership with, Media Foundation West Africa, Accra, Ghana.