Have
you ever been a respondent in a social research project and thought the
researchers had already come to a conclusion about its eventual outcome, but
were purely seeking some kind of public validation?
Thanks
to Mark Lyndersay’s diligence as the journalistic technology czar of T&T, I
had such an eerie experience earlier this week when I waded through the Survey
Monkey link generated by the Telecommunications Authority (TATT) entitled
“Local Content Consumer Survey”.
It
was not the apparent confusion between the use of “neither” with “nor” and
“or”, nor was it the use of leading questions that left no room for informed
dismissal of some basic premises that had me concerned.
Now,
I don’t mean to nit-pick over the imprecision of the survey. I can do so, but I
won’t.
It’s
a phenomenon we have all grown used to in the way we do business in this town.
The police, politicians, attorneys, journalists not paying attention to fine
detail and/or nuance.
It
has also been an integral feature of the “gimme gimme” campaign to employ
coercion in pursuit of a better deal for people in the creative services
industry.
Essentially
fascist in nature, it is the mistaken notion that in order for the creative
industry to thrive, there need to be checks on freedom of expression, in the
essential meaning of the term, guided by a sense of “nationalist” preference
and favour.
Go
look it up. I am not going to deliver a sermon on freedom of expression,
especially to people who rely on it in order to practise their craft as
musicians, poets, dramatists and visual artists.
Yet,
we have this perennial campaign to legislate taste. To regulate, by official
dictat, personal preference.
Sounds
familiar, doesn’t it?
None
of this is to suggest that in small, vulnerable societies such as ours there
cannot or should not be an effort to incentivise creative content as an
industry. We do it for a host of other economic sectors, including the
lucrative energy industry and for the vital production of food. Don’t get me
wrong.
So,
for example, I was a strong supporter of the tax rebate for investments in the
local creative industries when it was first introduced years ago, but never
actually implemented. Where is the campaign to have this put back on the
agenda, by the way?
There
is a role for fiscal intervention in such matters. But there should be no room
for the coercive arm of the state that would have the impact of restraint on
trade (broadcasters beware) and erecting regulatory “walls” against “foreign”
content.
In
fact, such a wall as much keeps us locked in as it insulates us from what flows
from the outside. It also betrays a complete lack of understanding of the
increasingly borderless nature of the global entertainment industry. This is
something that is good for us, not bad.
I
know young Caribbean musicians who have collaborations with their counterparts
all over the globe and create content that defies all current definitions of
what constitutes “local” and what constitutes “foreign”.
Which
leads me to the question in the survey about what is the meaning of the word
“local”. This includes proposed definitions that both include and avoid
reference to Caricom.
Now,
our immigration officers might not yet have received the memo, but there is
something called the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas which recognises equality of
treatment for all goods, services and people from within the Caribbean
Community (Caricom).
This
is a binding international treaty that has been subject to no shortage of
judicial scrutiny (a major raison d'ĂȘtre of the Caribbean Court of Justice)
with the general pronouncement that there is a natural expectation that Caricom
nationals should feel entitled to equal or equivalent treatment for themselves,
their goods and their services.
TATT’s
question thus betrays a misunderstanding of this country’s place in the scheme
of Caricom things. The Europeans, via the European Union, have used an
integration-based formulation to address the precise challenge TATT believes it
is theirs to settle, albeit with a “where practicable” proviso.
This
will also no doubt be reference to the application of content quotas in
Commonwealth countries such as Canada, Australia, Malaysia and South Africa.
Well, some of these countries recognise same-sex marriage. Let’s do that too.
Built
into many of the arguments I have been hearing has been a primal
anti-Americanism and the kind of anti-globalism talk we have most recently been
hearing from Washington DC itself.
How
far away is the step to regulate “foreign” music and film from placing similar
restrictions on the stage, books and the visual arts?
Let
me make a prediction. Survey or no survey TATT, in concert with the “gimme
gimme” crowd is moving forward with content restrictions in the broadcasting
sector. Email me your wagers.
First published in the T&T Guardian on May 18, 2017
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