Embracing New Media

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World Press Freedom Day 2012

May 3, 2012

Observance of World Press Freedom Day 2012 provides the Caribbean with an opportunity to take stock of its progress as a region in which rights and freedoms are held to be fundamental pillars of the development process.

This day focuses exclusively on freedom of expression, under whose cover freedom of the press permanently resides.

Though we have generally escaped the worst impacts of impunity, violence and official aggression, Caribbean social communicators and journalists have not eluded the potentially muting impacts of self-censorship, unenlightened regulation and challenging economic, social and political circumstances.

For this reason, our advocates are often minded to craft unique responses to unique conditions and to influence international discourse on such subjects on an unprecedented scale - not to build a deceptive, relativistic case as obtains in some territories in our region, but to help light the path to fundamental rights and freedoms in a changing region and world.

In this context, the theme of this year’s observances - New Voices: Media Freedom Helping to Transform Societies – is entirely appropriate as a reflection of the requirements of Caribbean development and change.

As relatively new nations, Caribbean societies have also, in many respects, been the new hemispheric voices of the past 50 years. We are now called upon to be more aware of the new voices within our midst.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova have asked the world to pay greater attention to the new players on the media stage and are urging greater recognition of and protection for new media practitioners. Indeed, these new social communicators are increasingly attracting the attention of enemies of the free press and, in some parts of the world, are being targeted for persecution to a much greater degree.

We must work to ensure the platform we share as both traditional and new media workers remains untouched by the hands of official censorship and that journalistic principles are promoted as common values among us all.

On this important day, the ACM urges its national affiliates to pay greater attention to building institutional capacity, engaging a wider cross-section of the communication industry, working more assiduously to promote the reform of media-related laws and operating as fearlessly independent agents of awareness and the change it brings. Those organisations that are in crisis must be rescued and those that are asleep must awaken. This is a sacred responsibility we ignore at our peril.

Media and Politics in Guyana

The vagaries of a minority government in Guyana unfolded dramatically as parliamentary debate on a G$192 billion (TT$6.4 billion) budget ended recently in Georgetown.

On more than one occasion, ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP) partisans, senior public servants and high-profile state officials and agency heads picketed parliament in a manner described by one local journalist as being more reflective of the actions of opposition parties over the years. The PPP has been in power since 1992.

Senior executives and employees of the state-operated National Communications Network (NCN) and Government Information News Agency (GINA) were on the streets protesting cuts to their budgets proposed by the two opposition parties in parliament without whose support government’s budget estimates could not have been approved.

The situation arose following November 28, 2011 elections which saw the PPP winning 32 seats – one seat short of a majority in the 65-seat National Assembly. Twenty-six of the remaining seats went to A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) opposition coalition while the Alliance for Change won seven seats determined under the country’s system of proportional representation.

As a consequence, local wags have been noting that there has never been such a consistent incidence of 100% parliamentary attendance and high level of consultation among the political parties.

But opposition moves to reduce state subventions to state media have led to a bizarre string of developments.


Prior to the NCN/GINA demonstration, for example, live coverage of the second cricket Test match between the West Indies and Australia in Dominica was suddenly suspended when an NCN panel including the station’s Chief Executive Officer, Mohamed Sattaur; Programme Manager Martin Goolsaran and Editor-in-Chief, Michael Gordon appeared on-screen to explain their opposition to the proposed cuts.

Radio audiences on some services had also earlier been met with “dead air” as NCN shut down the country’s lone radio station overnight and television viewers lost signals from NCN’s television service when the state broadcaster shut down their Linden transmitters.

NCN Chief Executive Officer, Mohamed Sattaur, explained the disruptions in service were necessary “because we are just making people aware that the cut in the subventions will have consequences.”

At issue, in this instance, were cuts separately proposed by the APNU and AFC to subventions emanating from the office of the president to the media agencies. Payments to “contracted employees” constituted the most contentious slice of the cuts and wrangling over cuts there had been intense, but recommended reductions in capital and current subventions to the two state media agencies led to the unprecedented developments in the state media.

Proponents of the APNU/AFC cuts at NCN have referred to a March 19, 2012 letter to AFC Chairman, Khemraj Ramjattan, in which Sattaur claims that up to 90% of the Network’s revenue is derived from “our commercial activities.” One government minister even testified in the debate that the agency had collected over G$500 million (TT$16 million) in advertising revenues in 2011.

The correspondence and subsequent official disclosure appeared to blunt the claim by the service that the reduction in subventions will lead to a heavy loss of jobs, cutbacks in broadcasting times and an inability to perform NCN’s traditionally supportive work in the areas of religious diversity, culture, fashion and sport.

The NCN CEO confirmed that the company’s broadcast services were heavily supported by commercial activities with close to 15% support from the state. The AFC proposal (the APNU had filed a separate motion on this issue) completely removes the G$81.2 million (TT$2.7 million) subvention on current expenditure, while the APNU was proposing abolition of a much smaller subvention under another budget heading.

Former Information Minister, turned leading AFC MP, Moses Nagamotoo, said he fully supported the cuts, notwithstanding his dogged defence of NCN activities while he was in office. He served as the first minister of information in the 1992 PPP administration under the late Cheddi Jagan but resigned from the party in 2011 following a protracted period of conflict with former president, Bharrat Jagdeo.

The NCN is widely criticised for ignoring opposition viewpoints and is described by former line minister, Nagamootoo, as “almost a PPP party outfit.”

During coverage of last year’s elections, it came under the critical scrutiny of a Media Monitoring Unit established under the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to monitor adherence to a code of media conduct during coverage of the polls.

“We are voting against more money for NCN because we believe it is biased, it is unfair, it is partisan and is almost a PPP party outfit that is used to sledge-hammer the opposition in Guyana,” Nagamootoo said.

Sattaur however contends that NCN services are much more than transmission of government programming, some of which is provided by GINA. As part of NCN’s “awareness” campaign on the issue, interviews are being conducted with persons from a variety of backgrounds attesting to the value of the station as a promoter of non-commercial interests private stations would readily support.

NCN currently employs 152 permanent and 70 contract workers in an operation that competes with 17 private stations. When voting on the subventions occurred, the PPP, with just one seat short, lost the state media battle.

In the National Assembly, four video cameras were positioned to capture the government benches and a side-view, at best, of opposition MPs. One solitary camera - "a PNC camera", this reporter was told - faced the APNU/AFC benches. Two of the group of four were NCN and GINA cameras.

This did not help the situation.