History of the Liberia Media Center (LMC)
- The Liberia Media Center (LMC) works in the areas of media development, access to information, transparency and accountability, and peacebuilding in Liberia. LMC fosters local development through the utilization of communication and information sources. LMC exists to assist media and civil society with professional services in a wide range of areas, including research, training, outreach and mass communication. The mission and goals of the organization are: To improve media capacity towards strengthening democracy and sustaining peace through the utilizing of communication and information resources by working with local and international partners and to ensure gender mainstreaming in the media. A secured, peaceful and democratic Liberia in which there exists an independent media, a culture of free expression and access to information
Major achievements/Success
- Over the past eleven years LMC has worked in Liberia to foster transparency and accountability. In May 2015, the LMC released its first report, covering 2004, on the state of Liberia’s implementation of its Freedom of Information law. The center is currently carrying out the second phase of the monitoring to cover 2015.
From 2007 to 2015 in partnership with the Radio Netherlands Training Center (RNTC) and IREX, the LMC provided training and equipment support to around 25 community radio stations located in 13 of Liberia’s 15 counties. The center’s intervention has also included developing the human resource capacity mainstream media organizations in the capital, Monrovia, and mainstreaming gender issues in various localities where our partner stations are located.
- Since 2012, the LMC has been involved with tracking government’s development projects as they relate to expenditures under the national budget. With funding from Trust Africa, OSIWA and IREX, this initiative has made budget numbers openly available, for the first time in Liberian history, to anyone with a mobile phone. It is free for mobile users to request updated budget numbers from the project’s database. Another component of this project allows people in Gbarnga, Buchanan, Ganta, Voinjama, and Monrovia to participate in opinion polls on issues that affect their communities.
In the same year the Liberia Media Center conducted gender sensitive reporting training for media personnel in the north-western region of Liberia including journalists from some selected media institution. The five-day training course held in Tubmanburg marked the World Women Day celebration of the year and was sponsored by the UN Women Office in Monrovia. Additionally, the Center conducted a gender sensitive regional training in Gbarnga for journalists in 2012 under the sponsorship of ActionAid-Liberia. These trainings were about tracking and reporting issues of sexual gender-based violence (SGBV) in the country.
- Besides, “Gender Sensitive Journalism” Course is inclusive in all of the LMC’s 2011 and subsequent election reporting trainings which from time to time administer to journalists how to handle gender issues in politics and decision making arena at every level of societal life. These training were and have been made possible through the sponsorship of the Radio Netherlands Training Center (RNTC), the International Research Exchange Board of America (IREX, the INTERNEWS with funding from USAID
- The LMC with support from the European Union has recently concluded a peacebuilding project in universities and community colleges in Monrovia, Bong County, Grand Bassa County, Nimba County, and Lofa County. As a result of this project, a course on peace building was developed and is now being taught at community colleges in Grand Bassa, Nimba and Lofa counties.The LMC has also worked with Trocaire, with funding from the EU, in Bong, Nimba, Grand Bassa and Lofa counties
- The LMC with the support of Toronto-based Journalists for Human Rights (JHR), between 2008 and 2012 provided training and support to dozens of Liberian journalists under the organization’s “Good Governance through Strengthened Media” project. The project not only provided rights media training for working journalists, it also worked with the University of Liberia’s journalism school to develop and introduce a rights media curriculum at the school.
- In 2011, the LMC played a major part in efforts aimed at ensuring transparent elections in Liberia. Thanks to the effort, the elections were peaceful and the outcome was respected, despite claims of fraud from the opposition. LMC believe the initiative inspired a huge degree of trust from the public for the work of the organization. Through a state-of-the-art computer resource facility, LMC provides daily access to working resources for Liberian journalists and media professionals at four Community Multimedia Centers established in four of Liberia’s fifteen counties. Similar facilities are also available at the organization’s headquarters in Monrovia.