{"id":72836,"date":"2022-12-21T20:57:51","date_gmt":"2022-12-21T20:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africannewspaper.net\/2022\/12\/21\/sierra-leones-press-freedom-situation-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly\/"},"modified":"2022-12-21T20:58:23","modified_gmt":"2022-12-21T20:58:23","slug":"sierra-leones-press-freedom-situation-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africannewspaper.net\/2022\/12\/21\/sierra-leones-press-freedom-situation-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly\/","title":{"rendered":"Sierra Leone\u2019s press freedom situation: The good, the bad and the ugly"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Sierra Leone enacted its criminal libel, seditious and public order laws (Part V) in 2020. Since then, press freedom has been expanding throughout the country, with the progress story punctuated in part by improvements in legal environment, the development of watchdog institutions for press freedom, and the consolidation of these institutions’ architectures.<\/p>\n
All of these positives were possible because of the excellent cooperation between government officials and the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists, a trade union of journalists in Sierra Leone.<\/p>\n
However, there still remain troubling chapters in the story \u2013 physical attacks, <\/strong>Threats, judicial harassment and summons, arrests, and detentions continue to happen in Sierra Leone. In addition, journalists are intimidated by government institutions.<\/p>\n Then, there is the issue of the country\u2019s telecommunications<\/strong> law<\/strong>Still, the authority is given to officials to revoke licenses of broadcast media houses at their discretion.<\/p>\n Two years after Sierra Leone’s criminal libel law was repealed, the state of press freedom is still a mixture of the good, bad, and the ugly.<\/p>\n The good\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n Executives from the SLAJ met on the 12th of Sept 2022. met<\/a>With the Minister of Information, and Communications, Mohamed Rahman Swray in Brookfields, Freetown, we struck up a conversation that brought out many positives for press freedom.<\/p>\n Ahmed Sahid Nasralla, President SLAJ, cited as one of many good developments a fine relationship that SLAJ maintains with the government the repeal of criminal libel law in 2020. This achievement has served as a launchpad for other positives such as the hosting of a media viability and investment conference.<\/a><\/p>\n