The press and human rights

It’s World Press Freedom Day today and it appears most people here don’t really care or understand what it’s all about. It also follows the observance, two days ago, of International Workers’ Day aka May Day.

Filipino journalist, Juan Pablo Salud, established a connection on Monday when he posted to his Facebook page: “One fact you don't hear very often is that writing is labour, and writers - novelists, journalists, poets, essayists, playwrights, screenwriters, songwriters, social media content creators … form part of the workforce.

We are found in every industry, every human endeavor since the dawn of civilization.”

This made me recall the time when (as a reporter and trade union member) covering labour news, I turned to a news editor and said of a planned union demonstration: “Shouldn’t we be out there too?” – despite knowing intimately of the weaknesses and foibles of a labour movement proceeding slothfully into the future, to the extent that today it appears stuck in the tarpits of slow death.

Whatever the appropriate response, I believe press freedom is intrinsically aligned to a wide swathe of freedoms and human rights – conscientious commitments that distinguish us from other animal groups.

Press freedom, as one by-product of wider freedom of expression, plays a key role in ensuring that other rights are the stuff of lived reality. This obtains even as we recognise that all rights are for everyone.

These rights include the full gamut of civil and political rights, alongside the economic, social and cultural. It is impossible, or at least highly unlikely, to distinguish the conditions conducive to one from the other without at the same time denying the inalienability, universality, and indivisibility of such freedoms.

In countries such as ours – the products of colonialism, slavery, and other forms of coercion – we continually encounter the cognitive dissonance that emerges each time we speak of asserting human rights. There is this endemic, quick resort to prohibition and an absence of the habits of freedom.

There are also people who despise the (admittedly imperfect) press and would bask in its demise over narratives or perspectives being given time and space that are not in keeping with their own.  

Another group includes those who do not appear to understand that press freedom implies the right of audiences/consumers to seek out, access, and procure content. Press freedom, therefore, is not only for the press.

All platforms can occupy space under the expansive umbrella of free expression, but the discrete elements (inclusive of amateur social media outputs in all their manifestations) are not all the same and distinctions are deservedly made.

Press freedom makes specific demands of mainstream, legacy media that do not necessarily extend to less formal platforms – whatever the common legal and presumed ethical obligations. This is, however, not to diminish the value of other channels.

The media’s validating role is also key to addressing disinformation and propaganda couched as independent news and information. Had things been different, considerable pandemic progress would not have been realised.

These things are being considered at a time when human rights and freedoms are being tested in unprecedented ways.

In the Caribbean, for instance, a scarcity of resources together with relatively weak social and political institutions conspire to undermine the prospects for peaceful and equitable growth and development.

Pandemic measures added considerably to the already challenging situation. We also face violent crime as a singularly critical threat to Caribbean civilisation, accompanied by an inability to properly understand and to address it.

We have seemingly been moving from one crisis to the next, and the implications for media practice at times such as these are exceedingly difficult to negotiate.

US scholar Dr Courtney C. Radsch, to whose research I have recently contributed, asserts: “When there is a fast pivot or crisis, media become even more politicised, and other institutions are affected in ways that put further pressure on independent journalism both inside the country and in surrounding areas, as well as in those that become migratory hosts.”

Additionally, in our neck of the woods, the indispensable role of reliable news and information in the achievement of even the most modest developmental aspirations is being undermined by brittle media infrastructure, endemic mis and disinformation, and governance systems that are distinctly opaque and unaccountable.

It has also not been helpful that politicians and their surrogates increasingly employ subversive tactics to undermine the credibility and value of independent journalism even as they ironically do so at their own peril.

At stake are rights in excess of those claimed by the media and journalists. We’d do well to remember this.

Young people and the "common agenda"

(First published in the T&T Guardian on April 26, 2023)

I am almost certain that most governments were not sure what they were getting themselves into when they delivered a 2020 mandate to the UN Secretary-General to come up with a roadmap for advancing a “common agenda” in response to “current and future (global) challenges.”

It had to be they did not countenance the explosive implications of a revised order, or different way of doing business that cedes power, privilege and responsibility to otherwise maginalised social, economic, and political elements.

Today, three years after this instruction to the global body, and the worst impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the war-mongering, imperialist desire, self-destructive development planning, and even more of the same old, same old remain firmly in place.

There in fact appears an even more intense devotion to the status quo – even on the heels of pandemic devastation.

Significantly, last week’s release of a third policy brief related to the “Common Agenda” mandate focuses ambitiously on youth participation in the decision-making process.

The “glass ceiling” concept has, quite rightly, occupied gender-aware spaces, but I can think of no other group – at least here in the Caribbean – more marginalised by power dynamics than our young people.

Think of the processes in which youth are engaged to convert ideas and dreams into tangible enterprises contributing to economic, social, and cultural wealth. I see few prospects for change.

The blockages, you see, are not passive omissions of policy and practice, but active borders policed by regulation, convention, and blatant discrimination.

On more than one occasion, I have had the painful displeasure of witnessing the deflating impacts of this phenomenon. I am sure that you have receipts of your own. Young people – bright-eyed and bushy-tailed – whipped into submission - seen but not heard, denied voice and opportunity.

The UN policy brief thoughtfully addresses some of these, but almost entirely from the standpoint of official validation through a process of so-called “empowerment.” “We” (who are in charge) should open doors for “them.”

There is a presumption of dominance in keeping with status quo dynamics when what is evidently needed is a revolution that turns our realities on their heads and shakes … hard.

What is the fear behind stepping aside? I have advocated for this for more rapid and relevant embrace of digitalisation in both the private and public sectors – a change recognisably dragging on its bottom to nowhere.

Come on. Stand aside, be prepared to offer advice based on experience, and pass the assignment to digital natives who eat, drink, and sleep such a boundaryless reality.

We have dinosaurs fixed on risk instead of young people who are recognising opportunity.

The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, in introducing the brief surmised that “transformative changes will simply not be possible at the scale required without the buy-in and contributions of a wide range of actors. This is especially true of the 1.2 billion young people alive today.”

Sounds like we have heard it all before, right? I have … like 50 years ago (minus the population figure).

I think the time has come for all of this to move from the stage of official briefs to multi-stakeholder action.

Our Caribbean governments joined the call for change in 2020. The UN system has done some work. What have we done? What do we expect to see come of this?

The painfully obvious through all this is that young people have, as the UN SG suggests “become a driving force for societal change through social mobilisation – pushing for climate action, seeking racial justice, promoting gender equality and demanding dignity for all.”

Right here in T&T, youth initiative and creativity are visible in music, art, and the employment of innovative technologies.

They are the ones who should be steering us through the digitalisation of government and private enterprise. I have argued before that an age ceiling should be set for experts leading the digitalisation processes.

Give me 30-year-old digital natives who ask all the “foolish questions.” Who understand that downloadable forms represent nothing new. That technological facades for manual back-ends are no longer fooling anyone.

I also feel sorry for the 50 and 60 and 70 year old politicians pronouncing authoritatively on needed prohibitions rather than the exploitation of social media opportunity.

I regret, on behalf of them, the false expectation that their own calls for a common agenda for change could countenance their own demise. Sadly, I am almost certain they will resist this with all their might.