Today’s column is inspired by the agony of independent journalism
in Guyana in the midst of the current post-election turmoil.
My interest in this extends beyond the fact that I have
lived and worked there and have been a frequent visitor as a journalism trainer
and journalist covering a wide variety of areas for a very long time. Up to
last January I was there as part of a training team for journalistic coverage
of the elections.
I have also served as editorial consultant for Insight – a
public affairs magazine published in Guyana - and have worked alongside the
people at the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) on the development and
application of media guidelines for coverage of elections there.
That experience inspired inclusion of the now-abandoned
GECOM Media Monitoring Unit and system of media refereeing as part of a media
best practice chapter in an Elections Handbook for Caribbean journalists edited
by Lennox Grant (a former media referee in Guyana) and myself in 2009.
I am saying all of this because people are entitled to raise
questions about my personal credentials as a Trini on this issue. But I think I
know about what I am speaking when I say that the challenges to independent
journalism in Guyana represent a grossly magnified version of what we face in
T&T and in most of the English-speaking Caribbean.
For example, the challenges confronting my colleagues in
Guyana today result in part from deliberate campaigns to undermine the work of
professional journalists over recent years and to insert in their stead regimes
of social media led misinformation and disinformation, popularly known as “fake
news.”
It is a modus operandi with which established, independent
media all over the world are now very familiar. Set political and sectional
partisans upon professional journalists – women journalists are particularly
targeted – reduce their influence, contaminate their messages, and (hopefully) commandeer
the public discourse.
We have seen it here in T&T and in my work up and down
the Caribbean region I have witnessed it. In some instances, even the
exigencies of industry competition serve the purpose of reducing the
credibility of the free press. The fact that poor media practice is so often on
display also does not help.
The confusion over professional credentials in the media
also adds to the messy scenario. The Guyana Press Association is made to
confront this on a daily basis and, in a sense, because of the highly formal
nature of the process there, people pretty much know who are the part-timers
and posers with absolutely no interest in the professional requirements of
transparency, balance and accountability.
I recall my own queasiness over expanding the membership
base of the Media Association here some years ago. But that’s another story.
The fact is that the accreditation process in Guyana provides a useful starting
point for uprooting potential malpractice and identifying the pretenders.
It is of course true that not all of us have been faithful
to all tenets of the profession both here and in Guyana. You can usually spot
them from a mile. But the problem, by and large, is exogenous in nature and
driven by elements inspired by a need to subvert the work of mainstream media.
This is no idle conspiracy theory. It is something that is
being monitored closely by press freedom and human rights organisations all
over the world. We essentially concede the combined impacts of declining
economic fortunes and the rise of “free” media, but at the same time recognise
the debilitating effects of concerted campaigns to undermine journalists and
the media for which they work.
In T&T, we are also witnessing the resurrection and
introduction of social media operations purporting to be legitimate news operations
that cleverly combine valid and fictitious “news” reports. All in time for
election 2020. Be vigilant.
Similar operations did quite a job in Guyana, and there are
prices being paid for that as we speak. Our neighbour’s house is on fire,
folks. This is not the distant flicker of an offshore oil platform.
(First published in the T&T Guardian on March 11, 2020)
(First published in the T&T Guardian on March 11, 2020)
