“We would be doing what we know best” was an answer when Isaac Massaquoi was once asked as to why he wanted to team up with another journalist, David Tam-Baryoh, to put resources together to secure and operate one of the biggest commercial radio stations in Sierra Leone. After several months, if not a whole year, the radio (FM 91.3) is now on air. It is heard in panguma and pendembu in the east, Moyamba and Bonthe in the far south and Karina, Kambia and Bimkolo in the north of the country; covering altogether a two-third airwaves portion of Sierra Leone.
. Programmatically, it would, as the two journalists wish, be the media’s media. This radio will not be just another radio. If the news breaks, they will know why it happened at all and if the Sierra Leonean society should be mirrored professionally, the operators must feverishly intend to reflect the prism of such nation-moving events and seek better interpretation. They should make money through ethical and quality advertisements without the least forgetting their social responsibility to the listening public. Within limited resources, the two media professionals behind this radio will try to assemble interpreters of Sierra Leone’s issues and forge to make sense out of our situations. If it be true that information is power, they must intently give that power to the democratic Sierra Leonean through the availability of quality and responsible information, using the much needed mechanism of dialogue, feed-back response assessment and news impact valuation.
Now that it can no longer be denied that radio is the most plausible and thus take precedence and appeal over the news paper reading culture in a country grappling with the ignominious effects of high illiteracy rate, Eagle radio-Africa on FM 91.3 in Freetown must attempt to wedge in-between what is available on our airwaves as listening choices and the innovations that must make radio programs desirable enough to help bring to focus the important issues of governance, economic self dependence and the fight against killer diseases. That other successful commercial radio stations have already been on the ground and in full operations before Eagle radio-Africa, does not make this venture a redundant one, at least, not even the sad idea of a pyrrhic victory would.
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