Journalist on Trial

The captivating story of Rodney D Sieh, one of Africa''s finest investigative journalists. This story will resonate with virtually every journalist today in an era consumed by daily tweets of a sitting US President and a 24-hour news circle that has seen real news eclipsed by fake news, and attempt to muzzle the free press. As publisher of Liberia''s leading newspaper, FrontPageAfrica, Siehs explosive reports have led to arrests, prosecutions and investigations of prominent Liberian government officials. Sentenced to 5,000 years in prison 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. Siehs work landed him among Reporters Without Borders'' Information Heroes of 2014. As a reporter for the Daily Observer newspaper and the British Broadcasting Corporation, Siehs coverage of the deaths and disappearances that followed Yahya Jammehs coup détat on 22 July 1994, forced him once again into exile to London, where he fled in 1994. He later took refuge in the United States.