By Maureen Sieh
In its 40-year history, the Daily Observer has weathered many storms including five closures, imprisonment, and threats to its journalists and three fires for fulfilling its watchdog role of exposing corruption, widespread human rights abuses meted against the Liberian people by their government.
One of the fires was in response to a story I wrote about the mysterious arrest and disappearance of Major General Kemeh, a son of Nimba County and former secretary general of the defunct People’s Redemption Council (PRC). Kemeh and his wife were spending the Christmas holiday in Nimba when former President Charles Taylor invaded Liberia from neighboring Ivory Coast on Christmas Eve 1989. The Kemehs were returning to Monrovia when they were stopped by government soldiers. General Kemeh was arrested, and the rest of the family returned home to Paynesville.
By Isaac Thompson, founding sub-editor
I remember that day 40 years ago as if it was yesterday.
It was mid-January, 1981, when I walked into the offices of a yet-to-be-launched newspaper at Crown Hill in Monrovia with an application for the position of a reporter.
I had worked for a couple of weeklies since 1979, just before the “4/14 blues”, the nickname for the April 14 riots that rocked the relatively sturdy foundations of Liberia’s political and social order and triggered a series of events, including the April 12 military coup a year later, that would culminate in one of the worst civil wars in Africa a decade later.
Liberia: Kenneth Best on the Daily Observer Newspaper and Its 40-Year Journey
Liberia: Kenneth Best on the Daily Observer Newspaper and Its 40-Year Journey
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The first thing I would like to do in this brief statement on the 40-year History of Liberia’s Daily ObserverNewspaper is to give thanks to Almighty God for giving Mae Gene and me, in January 1977, as we were coming to the close of our careers in Nairobi, Kenya, the idea of returning home to start Liberia’s first independent daily newspaper.
I remember vividly when we first started dating in 1970 that we conceived the idea of publishing a magazine in Liberia. We were not sure as to whether it would be one on politics or fashion or both. God blessed our relationship with consummation in marriage, on July 17, 1971. July 17 this year will make us 50 years married. To God Be the Glory! And thank you, Mae Gene!
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MONROVIA – The Publisher of Liberia’s first independent newspaper, Mr. Kenneth Y. Best, has recounted the “costly pains and challenges” him and several of his staffs suffered and encountered for establishing a news organ and reporting critical and balance stories in keeping with their reportorial duties in the country.
The Daily Observer newspaper was established in January 1981 during the brutal and cruel regime of military dictator Samuel K. Doe.
Mr. Best recalled that the beginning of the paper second month in existence, the “erratic, powerful and tyrannical Justice Minister, Chea Cheapoo” during the Doe, summoned him at his office on a Monday morning, and with loaded guns pointed at him from every direction and blasted for nearly two hours, because his paper had published a story about that was displeasing to him.