IPNews-Monrovia: The Publishers Association of Liberia (PAL), says it will begin Monday,April 6,2020, and indefinite ‘blackout and Black pages’, in Liberia, over the government of the Liberia continued refusal and reluctance to settled payments to the various Newspapers for over the last two years.
The Publishers and owners of various Newspapers speaking in joint statement following general meeting stated that they are disappointment over government’s reluctance to meet up with its indebtedness with the struggling Liberian media over the last two years after the ruling CDC government came to power.
At an emergency meeting in Monrovia on yesterday,Friday, April 4, the Publishers noted that despite the government’s repeated promises to meet up with its financial obligations to the media, it appears to have deliberately refused to live up to its promises.
The Publishers and Newspapers owners said as a result, media institutions are going through serious financial crisis, as their advertising base remains at a low, compounded by the government’s failure to pay its debt, is the fact that the Executive Mansion website has over the past years has taken away vacancy notices and other adverts from the local media.
“The prevailing situation is forcing the media into collapse, amid the daily high cost of printing, generator fuel and other logistics that the media need to pay for on a daily basis in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic.” The statement read.
The media houses statement warned that government’s continuous failure to pay its debt to media institutions would eventually lead them to taking several actions, including media blackout and possible withdrawal from the newsstands.
It may be recalled that late 2019, during the induction of the President of the Press Union of Liberia the Minister of Finance and Development Planning (MFDP), Samuel D. Tweah, Jr. publicly announced that the Liberian Government was willing to settle all media bills.
The report of the publishers and media owners planned blackout and black-pages in the coming days has sent mixed reaction across Monrovia throughout this weekend when with ordinary people expressing sympathy with struggling media houses while they continued o provide much needed information coverage on the devastating COVID-19 pandemic
