Liberia

Liberia is an anglophone West African country of roughly 5.4 million people, with its capital at Monrovia and the Liberian dollar (LRD) circulating alongside the US dollar. The continent’s oldest republic, founded in 1847, it is a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and emerged from a fourteen-year civil war (1989–2003) into a sustained period of multiparty democracy.

The defining political event of the review period sits a little before the SMM 2026 window: in the runoff of the November 2023 election, Joseph Nyuma Boakai of the Unity Party narrowly defeated the incumbent George Weah of the Coalition for Democratic Change, who conceded, a peaceful change of government that drew international attention. Boakai was inaugurated on 22 January 2024, and by May 2026 the Boakai administration was more than two years into office, well past the immediate transition phase that still defines several other countries in the region. Reform of the country’s state media sat firmly within Boakai’s broader public-service agenda but had not yet produced structural change to the broadcaster or the news agency by mid-2026.

State media in Liberia operate within a comparatively open legal environment that nonetheless leaves little structural space between the executive and the institutions that report on it. Both outlets sit within the state information apparatus, but through different routes: the Liberia News Agency falls directly under the Ministry of Information, Cultural Affairs and Tourism (MICAT), while the Liberia Broadcasting System is a government-owned corporation whose board is chaired by the Information Minister, currently Jerolinmek Piah. Broadcasting licences and frequencies are issued separately by the Liberia Telecommunications Authority (LTA). The professional Press Union of Liberia, in existence since 1964, plays a significant role in the wider media community but is not a statutory regulator.

The legal environment for the private press was strengthened in 2019 by the Kamara Abdullah Kamara Act of Press Freedom, which repealed criminal libel against the President, sedition and criminal malevolence offences, leaving defamation as a civil matter. Reform of the state broadcaster has been on the agenda for longer: UN human-rights experts noted in 2018 that a proposed Liberia Public Broadcasting Service Act would transform the Liberia Broadcasting System into an independent public-service broadcaster and require the repeal of Decree No. 20 that establishes its current structure, and an equivalent decade-long push for greater autonomy at the Liberia News Agency has remained stalled at the Legislature. Liberia ranked 58th of 180 in the Reporters Without Borders 2026 World Press Freedom Index with a score of 64.54, in the “problematic” band, down from 54th in 2025.

Two state media outlets are tracked in the State Media Monitor dataset for Liberia, both classified as State-Controlled. The distinction between them lies less in their classification than in their appointment channels, with the broadcaster and the news agency running through different lines of executive authority to the same end.

Liberia Broadcasting System (LBS) is State-Controlled (SC). The country’s national broadcaster, founded in 1960 as a radio service and extended to television in 1964, operates the LNTV and Metro TV channels and ELBC 99.9 FM and Metro 89.9. LBS is funded primarily from the public purse, about 60–72% state subsidy in recent years according to State Media Monitor baseline figures, with its board, Director-General and senior management appointed directly by the President. The broadcaster was substantially upgraded during the review period: in May 2026 President Boakai commissioned a new US$5.5 million broadcast complex at LBS under an agreement signed with the People’s Republic of China in April 2024, adding seven new studios, a central control system and satellite broadcasting capability.

Liberia News Agency (LINA) is State-Controlled (SC). Liberia’s state news agency, established in the late 1970s and rebuilt from 2006 after the destruction of its network during the civil war, operates as a wire service under MICAT and is housed on the ministry’s premises. Its current website is hosted as a subdomain of the ministry’s own domain. Funding flows entirely through MICAT, with no commercial revenue; LINA’s head and senior management are appointed by the Information Minister rather than directly by the President. The agency’s recent operational condition has been the subject of pointed local reporting: a December 2025 investigation by The Liberian Investigator found that LINA received more than US$706,000 across the 2024 and 2025 national budgets yet was “nearing collapse,” with staff describing the newsroom as “nonfunctional” and the agency’s decade-long push for autonomy stalled at the Legislature.

The two outlets sit in the same classification for converging reasons. LBS is a government-owned corporation under direct presidential appointment, primarily public-funded, and operating without a statutory editorial safeguard. LINA is a state agency housed inside the supervising ministry, wholly state-funded through that ministry, ministerially appointed, and described by the State Media Monitor review as functioning in practice more as a public-relations arm of the executive than as an independent journalistic institution. The appointment channels differ, directly presidential at the broadcaster, ministerial at the news agency, but the underlying lines of executive control are the same, and neither outlet has a commercial-revenue base, a statutory independence guarantee or an arms-length board of the kind that would attenuate that control.

Neither has shifted classification since 2022. The change of government following the November 2023 election produced a leadership reshuffle at both outlets (Eugene L. Fahngon at LBS in February 2024, ATrokon Tarr at LINA in May 2024) and, in LINA’s case, a small procedural correction returning the head’s appointment to ministerial rather than direct presidential control. But the State Media Monitor review records that as of mid-2025 no structural reforms had been introduced to alter governance, appointment power or editorial safeguards at either institution. The proposed Liberia Public Broadcasting Service Act remains a draft reform proposal that has not been enacted, and reform proposals for LINA’s autonomy remain in legislative limbo. With legal protections for the private press comparatively strong but the structural insulation of state media essentially absent, Liberia’s state media remain firmly within the State-Controlled tier, and the SC classification continues to apply to both LBS and LINA for 2026. No sector-specific rules on AI-generated or synthetic news content in Liberia’s state media were identified during this review.

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