An S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications professor has started a campaign to free a Liberian investigative journalist, whose imprisonment has seen widespread criticism from the international journalism community.

Ken Harper, an assistant professor of multimedia photography and design, has been a vocal critic on campus condemning reporter Rodney Sieh’s imprisonment. Sieh, who wrote for The Post-Standard between 2000-2003, is publisher and editor of FrontPage Africa, Liberia’s foremost investigative newspaper.

Sieh’s supporters say FrontPage Africa’s commitment to exposing corruption and publishing stories critical of the government cost Sieh and the newspaper $1.5 million in civil libel damages. Sieh, unable to pay the costs, was jailed Aug. 23, and the newspaper was shut down by court order.

A week after Sieh’s arrest, Harper published a plea for help on Newhouse’s website, titled “Help Free Rodney Sieh.”

In the post, he urged others to pressure the Liberian government to free Sieh by signing petitions and using any of the resources they have at their disposal, he said. He said in an interview he also hopes to start a design campaign that will highlight the importance of a free press.

“I think that all these small actions make a difference and a large part of this is being aware,” Harper said.

The newspaper has been successful in bringing (the national government’s) attention to issues such as prostitution, poverty and gender discrimination and has exposed some of the biggest scandals in Liberia, Sieh said in an Aug. 29 video for the campaign on multimedia, photography and design’s Vimeo account.

“When I first started FrontPage Africa my whole idea was to revolutionize this country in terms of media,” he said in the video. “We’ve actually been successful in finding our niche as an investigative newspaper.”

In the past, Harper said he’s worked with Sieh and FrontPage Africa through a program called Together Liberia, which provides multimedia training for Liberian journalists and assists them in acquiring the equipment they need to tell their stories.

Although FrontPage Africa is still available online, Liberia has one of the lowest volumes of Internet traffic per capita in the world, according to research compiled by Google on Liberia’s internet ecosystem in 2011.

The Tully Center for Free Speech at Syracuse University has also expressed solidarity with Sieh. Roy Gutterman, director of the Tully Center, wrote to Liberia’s Consul General in New York pleading for Sieh’s release.

“The best we can do is hope that we can exert a little pressure on the government and educate the government about the value of the free press,” Gutterman said. “Reporters need to be able to do what they do to inform the public, and sometimes they need protection.”

Harper, the organizer of the campaign, said every bit of support made a difference for this cause, no matter the size of the contribution.

Said Harper: “All these small actions make a difference, and a large part of it is being aware. All of it comes together. It’s just a pebble, but that’s how you make a rock.”

Published on September 10, 2013 at 3:09 am

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