The Liberia Media Center has received funding from four of its partners, USAID through IREX, UNESCO Paris, the Danish based International Media Support (IMS) and the Africa Elections Project to implement an elections support program "Strengthened Media for Transparent Elections" for over three hundred local journalists covering the 2011 Elections.
The program would amongst other things support a multi-purpose Elections Reporting Center (ERC) for local journalists and provide training and logistical support for media coverage of the process across the country.
The ERC will provide daily online services for local reporters through the use of ICTs and social media applications. It will also provide monitoring services for media coverage and incidence of violence through a Call Center jointly run with the Africa Elections Project.
The Election Reporting Center will be furnished with a state-of-the-art E-News Lab for training and online reporting purposes. It will be equipped with a television, radio and newspaper monitoring platform.
The project will provide over 250 mini recorders, 50 motorbikes, 45 digital cameras, five High Definition Video Recorders, 50 smartphones and a free call network for three hundred reporters covering the elections across the country for four months.
Considering the crucial nature of the elections, the project will regularly release an assessment report and issue weekly alerts on the performance of the media, methodologically capturing major ethical breaches of the Elections Reporting Code of Conduct and the Press Union of Liberia Code of Ethics for journalists.
The alerts will feature typical violations such as Incitement, Biases, Partisan Reporting, Stereotyping,, Defamation and Misrepresentation of political parties and their candidates.
The Report is intended to promote greater public scrutiny of the media as the country goes through the 2011 electoral process.
Analyst
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