Journalist on Trial: Fighting Corruption Media Muzzling and a 5000-year Prison Sentence in Liberia

Journalist on Trial is the captivating story of Rodney D. Sieh one of Africas finest investigative journalists. This is not just Rodneys story but the story of virtually every journalist today in an era that has become consumed by daily tweets of a sitting US President and a 24-hour news cycle that has seen real news eclipsed by fake news. And where some leaders of the so-called free world are terrorizing journalists into submission.As publisher of Liberias leading newspaper FrontPageAfrica Siehs explosive reports have led to arrests prosecutions and investigations of prominent Liberian government officials. Sentenced to 5000 years in imprisonment for a trumped-up libel charge in 2013 Siehs arrest and jailing triggered an international outcry and highlighted the continuing existence of criminal libel statutes in Africa where politicians use the courts to intimidate and silence the media from exposing their corruption. His sentence also brought pressure from journalists with The New York Times BBC Toronto Star Globe & Mail and others in the global journalist rights community to win his release. Siehs work landed him among Reporters Without Borders Information Heroes of 2014. Sieh fled the brutal civil war in his homeland in 1992 for exile in The Gambia. As a reporter there for both his uncle Kenneth Bests Daily Observer newspaper and the British Broadcasting Corporation his coverage about the deaths and disappearances that followed Yahya Jammehs coup détat on July 22nd 1994 forced him once again into exile to London UK. He later took refuge in the United States.