‘WEIRD & ABSURD’ -New PAL Leader Describes Emansion Advertising

MONROVIA – It is not clear exactly what the Executive Mansion has got to gain—commercially or politically—in letting the official website of the Liberian presidency used as platform for advertising material from public and private institutions. What is clear however is that the media entities generally see the act, which has spanned from the administration President George Weah leadership and now to the Joseph Boakai epoch, as a bloodless, quiet collusion by government and the public and private entities to asphyxiate and even kill the media, particularly newspapers, whose life rests on advertisement. As the Publishers Association of Liberia, a major auxiliary of the Press Union of Liberia (PUL), makes another democratic transition with the inauguration of a new leadership, the emergent leader brings the puzzling advertisement debacle to the public discourse once gain, describing advertising on the Emansion Website ‘weird and Absurd’. The Analyst reports.  

The new leader of the Publishers Association of Liberia (PAL) has described the use of presidential website Emansion as ‘weird and absurd’.

“Private institutions   using the official website of the presidency  to advertise. This is very weird and absurd   to say the least,” he said, thanking  God that he was making the statement as diplomats were in this hall. 

“Please let me know here today or later if the official websites for your respective presidents are bastardized?” Toweh quipped. “Someone at the Executive Mansion is doing serous business at the expense of president Joseph Boakai. And Mr. Vice president, as Chief messenger for the president, please convey to his excellency President Boakai that someone at the Executive Mansion has turned the website into an open advertising ground where any one can just move there to place advertisement on it.”

The PAL leader said his administration will constitute a crack team of PAL members to meet with officials at the Executive Mansion to find an amicable solution to the issue that is of grave concern to the PAL.

“Do not reduce the presidency website to GobaChove market; where all sorts of commodities are taken there for sale,” he empahsized, appreciating the few INGos and NGOs that are still around and doing sporadic advertisements.

In the same vein, he continued, governments all over the world, are the largest advertisers with the media.

“It is time the government settles its financial obligations to the media. Paying our debts is a consequential relief for every media entity struggling to meet its commitments to vendors (printers) and employees,” Mr. Toweh indicated, stating further that many media managers were happy when they heard the appointment of Augustine Ngafuan as minister of Finance that he is a friend to the media and might be somehow sympathetic to the plight of the media. 

“But we are yet to feel his positive impact. We hope we will feel it soon,” he said. “While we call on the government to demonstrate the highest degree of commitment to its partnership with the media chorus, our international partners can’t be ignored in appreciating them for the numerous support they have rendered and continue to render; especially USAID, Plan International, and others.

“And for USAID representative here, or proxy,  publishers want you to convey  our message to president  J. Donald Trump(whom I  describe as a no nonsense president -fire for fire) to look at USAID work that it was a help to the Liberian media to some level.”

He expressed how deeply grateful PAL is, indicating that his administration” counts on partners for more support, specifically in the area of media training, development, empowerment  and sustainability.”

“This is because the challenges are colossal,” the new PAL leader said, recalling that in evolving global media landscape requires an up-to-speed local media landscape that responds to reportorial challenges and other core functions of the media.

“One of our administration’s priorities will be to reach out to these partners to scout new grounds for enhanced collaboration and partnership. The media needs support more than ever before,” he said.

As a mark of courtesy, Toweh paid tribute to is predecessors. He said: “Let me also thank the chief architect of this institution, Mr. Roger Seton,  Mr. Sando Moore who later handed over to Mr. Stanley Seak o r(who is at times referred to as Omar Bongo) named after  former president of Gabon. Let me not forget the big six, headed by the big fish, Philbert Brown.”

He recalled: “History educates us that the advent of a new administration over any organization, even a country, is the beginning and dawn of a new chapter. Sometimes, that chapter is one of failure, or one of a thriving success. For the PAL, it is not to say that our induction to steer its affairs, is a start of a remarkable journey of a new order, a new approach, and an ardent determination.”

Being cognizant of this, he continued, “the role of the media is cardinal and critical to national development, we acknowledge the enormity of the task before us.

“We, however, should not elude the fact that no task is insurmountable in the midst of collective determination and purpose to act together and accept together. It now behooves us, as PAL and media executives, to harness our energies in a more assertive manner, if we should realize the goals we will set before ourselves.”

The said his admnistration has set an ambitious plan that will be executed over the next three years.

“We therefore urge all of you to watch us along the way as our collective actions will speak for us,” he indicated, challenging all members to “pull out the best in us as elected officers and members of this institution   to overturn failures into successes by changing the narratives and shifting the paradigm. Failure should not be associated with us in anyway of form.”

As a professional journalist and communication expert, he made it known that he’s not blind to the depth of challenges, not just as PAL, but also as journalists in general.

Mr. Toweh said further: “There is no question about how these challenges have defied and shaped our collective determination to sustain, exemplify and nurture this celebrated journalism fraternity – one without which democracy and society falter and citizens deprived of vital information that brightens and enables them to set future agendas.”

He observed that the traditional media of radio stations and newspapers, which  serve as life-wire and pacesetter, are teetering, and that the newspaper industry is in a near-plateau state and  falling between the clutches of survival and doom. 

“And knowing this, it is about time that we muster the courage and seek other complimentary means or form some sort of collaboration or merger for the common good of the industry. Let us work together to build institutions and sustain it,” the PAL leader said.

The question before us is how we galvanize the temerity, the also said, the sort of practical actions not only to confront, but to also  remedy this situation as urgently as possible.

“Realistically so, the perspectives gathered from the look of things suggest that we are in a softy place than we were in the last decade. Indeed, we are at a crossroad. A point where if we are not careful it may lead to a very deep decline,” he said. “Do we ask ourselves why the unbelievably unprecedented proliferation of media institutions, be it newspaper, online TV or websites, and the rest? Do we care to know the negative or positive, advantage or disadvantage of this trend of events affecting the media?”