Where is there a Daily Mail in the Caribbean?

My cousin, Marcus Sheldon Gibbings, was stabbed to death in an apartment in Bermuda on October 26, 2006. The subsequent police investigation – if we were to be charitable enough to describe it as that – remains unsuccessful.

Marcus Gibbings

The murder was 16 years after the racist killing of 18 year old, Stephen Lawrence in Eltham in south-east London.

Two murders under two completely different circumstances. Marcus was 32 - a Trinidadian living and working in Bermuda. Lawrence was a student and the son of immigrant parents in the United Kingdom.

What united the two were that police investigations into the circumstances surrounding their murder were affected by the fact that officialdom viewed them essentially as socially-marginal individuals – Stephen, a young black male and Marcus, a Caribbean “foreigner”.

In both cases there were also adequately strong grounds for concluding that criminal cases could have been brought against clearly-identifiable suspects but nothing happened. Overwhelming circumstantial evidence pointed in singular directions in both instances.

There was also the added pressure of concerned parents. In Stephen’s case his parents tirelessly devoted their energies in lobbying for criminal charges to be brought against to persons which strong evidence pointed. In Marcus’s case, his father Richard has tried from a distance to keep the case “warm”.

The Bermuda Gazette in Bermuda has tried in its own way to also keep the story of Marcus’s murder alive. In the UK, the Daily Mail went much, much further, in 1997 publishing an amazing front-page story which identified five “murderers” – daring them to sue if the newspaper was mistaken or wrong.

On January 4, 2012 the court sentenced two men, Gary Dobson and David Norris, to 14 and 15 years in prison respectively.

In January 2012, Marcus’s killer remains at large. A free person. Is there a Daily Mail to do the unthinkable? Is there a sufficiently independent and intact legal and judicial system to enable such boldness?

Is the quality of intervention of a Daily Mail conceivable anywhere in the English-speaking Caribbean? Or do judges, politicians, the police and many regular citizens consider the press to be necessary though bothersome evils?

Just asking.

A Reporter’s Notebook - Haiti

The view of Port au Prince at dusk from the barricaded premises of Le Chateau Phoenix in hilly Pétion-Ville offers dust and haze. Here is where formerly exiled Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier would have, in January, fixed his first extended gaze at the shattered city he fled 25 years ago.

The view of the mountain from down below, at the foot of the bumpy, pot-holed route is however not as clear as it is captive to the unimaginable filth and disorder of city streets which, 22 months ago, had become an open, steaming morgue.

An irascible American-born hotelier chain-smokes through his greetings and offers a room that quite possibly served as temporary home to the returning political heir who led the country for 15 years following the death of his father, “Papa Doc” François Duvalier, in 1971.

Today, “Baby Doc” prefers to keep a low profile. Several leading Haitians, including a former spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon have filed charges of corruption, kidnapping and torture against Duvalier. Michele Montas is one. She is a journalist who served under Ban until shortly before the 2010 earthquake. Montas is also the wife of slain Haitian broadcaster, Jean Dominique, whose April 2000 assassination remains curiously unpunished.

From Pétion-Ville you see the sun set over a colourless cityscape. Over the short wall near the Phoenix swimming pool, the shock of green to the left frames other well-endowed structures that line the narrow, bumpy route to the peak. Along the street you only know these buildings are there because large, sheeted metal gates painted rusty red, and sometimes green, announce a different presence. But from the hills, they jut out almost guiltily through the green.

Down the hill, the road is narrow and dusty and dry. There are people everywhere; baskets, bicycles, chickens, children in tow. Young, beautiful women, their hair brilliant and orderly, are selling used clothing, food, bandages and hairstyles. Men sell mobile phone credits, tyres, cigarettes and water. Children run precariously between the lawless motorbike taxis and reckless, colourful buses packed to the brim with arms and legs and market animals. A proud student holds on with one hand, his uniform clean and starched – college tie like a proud flag behind him as the bus speeds by.

An overflowing stream rushes down a narrow lane onto the main road and the ladies take their shoes off and shuffle to higher ground. “Politics,” says the driver as the water takes litter downstream to other streets.

There are mounds of 22-month old rubble and 10-second old trash on almost every street. Local wags wonder why the United Nations’ blue helmet troops don’t trade their guns for shovels and brooms. Why the plane-loads of evangelists don’t spend less time saving souls and more time saving lives by clearing the mess and perhaps previewing the heaven they know so much about. Port au Prince, all agree, is a public health nightmare actualised but neglected.

It is a four-hour, carefully-executed drive to Les Cayes. On the way, there are more tent cities near Leogane located at the epicenter of the 2010 quake. There are portions of the road that will tear your under-carriage to bits if you do not notice the sharp drops and deep fissures on an otherwise decent highway through south-western towns.

When darkness falls, the flambeaux come out as people walk and talk and eat and preach and contemplate the future. Oncoming lights are deceiving – one light might be an oncoming motorbike taxi, a converted flat-tray truck/bus or a heavy duty construction vehicle with a sleepy driver and defective head-lights.

Nobody knows the speed limits and nobody cares and a polite police roadblock is a check for documents; not lights or brakes or passenger restrictions. The Highway Code is the law of necessity. There are two road accidents on the way to Les Cayes. A motorbike rider is writing in pain on the road and is comforted by a crowd. A truck has run into a ditch and men with instant bags run toward the cargo.

Then comes the seaport city of Les Cayes. It is said that Simon Bolivar came here to recruit freedom fighters for his South American incursions. It is bustling with street vendors and sweltering midday cafes with fish and conch and fried goat with plantains and rice. At night, the flambeaux come out and the hum and laughter of life are alight.

Here, a Canadian volunteer veterinarian says his work to immunise animals is a virtual con-job by a clandestine Christian charity to win souls. “I did not know what I was in for, until I came and I was taken to this church …” he mutters over breakfast. In the hotel car park, there are vehicles from the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Organisation for Migration and a white van that has come to pick him up to deliver rabies vaccines to horses and mules and donkeys.

Head due south-west and back along the coast headed north, you reach Port Salut where you will also find Pointe Sable – two kilometers of calm, blue water and white sand beach. There are no crowds this time of year … yet. The craft and food vendors take what business they can get. Straw hats and place-mats and wooden figures of kissing couples and women on donkeys. On the menu there is goat and fish and beef and pork and conch. It’s half the hotel price and comes with mild pepper sauce.

About an hour and a half from Les Cayes in the other direction, you can get to the cloud-crowned region of Salagnac that reaches an elevation of close to 1,000 metres. A red, treacherously unpaved bauxite-laden road leads to pine cone trees, a constant mist, a quaint mountain school, an agricultural research station and yam and carrot plantations.

Salagnac is where the contrasting pictures of Haiti are best recognised. The stuffy, sickening streets of Port au Prince, pretentious glory of Pétion-Ville, the gloom of the tents and “politics” of flooded streets are nowhere near the pristine foliage and gentle smiles of farmers’ children.

Tomorrow comes the drive back to Port au Prince, the hotel overlooking the haze, the constant hum and motion of people, blue helmets with big guns hustling to and fro, a chaotic airport where men with badges offer to help you jump the queue for a tip, endless employment-generating security checks and a flight among returning preachers counting souls.

REPORTING LABOUR ISSUES

Remarks at the Opening Ceremony of “Communicating Rights at Work" – A Training Workshop for Media Professionals. Port of Spain – September 28, 2011

The ACM is delighted to be associated with this activity over the next three days. This workshop is an entirely fitting intervention by the ILO. It comes at a time when the region appears challenged by the need to balance political and economic expediency against the minimum requirements of universally-accepted rights and standards that span virtually the entire spectrum of human, social interaction.

On this occasion, we focus on international labour standards and how best media professionals are able to communicate workplace rights. In many respects, this subject does not represent neutral turf. Labour standards are by no means non-contentious, politically-blind obligations. They meet the classical criteria of the news agenda; presenting opportunities for following conflict, tracking money flows, reporting intrigue, defining inter-personal and group relations and identifying the fulfillment or lack of fulfillment of human potential.

For this reason, what participants are being offered over the next few days constitutes a bountiful package of raw story material waiting to be further elaborated on the news and features pages and broadcast productions of our various media enterprises.

And what stories they are.

We will explore the unfolding canvass of globalisation and how rights at work have become a cross-cutting, pervasive issue ignored at the peril of countries such as ours. The quest for social justice in the face of changing paradigms and a growing sense that poverty and hunger entangle the humanscape like lethal, creeping vines.

The tripartite formula, even as changing circumstances continually challenge the mathematics of relationships across the labour aisles and bring into clearer view the algebra that leads to cohesion and social peace. The role of media as interlocutors in the developmental dialogue – as intermediaries between the governed and those who govern.

Indeed, these are all stories that already reach our front pages and lead our newscasts in the garb of crime and violence, industrial conflict, political intrigue and the terms of our peoples’ engagement with the world around them.

We are fortunate that our alliance with the ILO has led us to this point. Our societies cry out for counsel on the maintenance of freedoms and rights. They urge us on to provide a basis for understanding and appreciating the value of minimum expectations in a world of change.

Understanding labour standards and their impact on tangible economic outputs can provide a much needed nexus between aspiration and achievement – how societies construct tangible evidence out of otherwise elusive, unseen values and standards and goals. How rights and freedoms are indispensable, indivisible features of human progress, however grave the present reality, however urgent the need to abrogate them appear.

In this regard, we would do well to get these stories right. It is our obligation. It is an important requirement which substantiates the case for specific, discrete rights and freedoms for a sector upon which modern democracies continue to rely.
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Improving Media Coverage of Immigration Issues

Report of Caribbean Working Group on Coverage of Immigration Issues
Austin Forum – September 8-10, 2011


The Caribbean Group comprised: Wesley Gibbings, Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers Trinidad and Tobago (Moderator); Colette Les Pinasse, journalist, Haiti; Gotson Pierre, Alterpresse, Haiti, Maude Malengrez, FOKAL/OSF Haiti and Maria Soldevilla, Listin Diario, Republica Dominicana.


The subject of improving media coverage of immigration issues in the Caribbean was addressed by (i) identifying issues that required further journalistic investigation and (ii) proposing mechanisms to more efficiently achieve improved coverage.


Areas for Further Journalistic Investigation

1. The incidence of re-migration;
2. The processing, re-integration and treatment of criminal deportees;
3. The role of the Caribbean Diaspora in influencing politics and economic life;
4. Evolving means of moving money between borders in the form of financial remittances;
5. Closer examination of the incidence of intra-regional migration;
6. Work on assessing the impact of recent trends involving new groups of immigrants such as Asians and Africans into the Caribbean;
7. The integrity of institutional support for immigrants including the provision of vital services;
8. More diligent monitoring of immigration laws and their impact on emerging humanitarian concerns;
9. Examination of the impact of outward migration on children;
10. Avoidance of the use of stereotyping in the treatment of immigrants;
11. Attention should be paid to the “feminisation” of the immigration phenomenon;
12. The need to verify official immigration statistics;
13. Recognition of the multi-dimensional nature of immigrant engagement in the life of host countries;
14. The use of new technologies as immigrant communities communicate with their home countries and as their families and friends communicate with them;
15. The incidence of transient groups that move continually from one country to the next;
16. Language and cultural shifts as a consequence of immigration;
17. The incidence of “paperless” immigrants;
18. The economic impact of the splintering of families in the face of outward migrations;
19. Coverage of new money flows as a result of immigration

Mechanisms for Improved Coverage

1. Development of online platforms for the sharing of official immigration data within the region;
2. Establishment of a multi-media/multi-lingual repository for news stories and information on regional immigration;
3. The greater use of social networks that aid in the networking of Caribbean journalists for information sharing;
4. A mechanism to facilitate greater cross-border collaboration on media productions;
5. The use of journalistic exchanges among countries across the language groups in the Caribbean;
6. Greater collaboration among NGOs/academia/community media and mainstream media in the coverage of immigration issues;
7. Mechanisms for advocates to more efficiently influence media managers;
8. Development of more comprehensive databases for accessing sources of opinion and information on immigration;
9. Introduction of an annual Caribbean Forum to explore immigration and other relevant media issues;
10. Mechanisms to promote journalistic training.

A Death By Suicide

Freedom of expression is not under threat in Trinidad and Tobago. It simply does not currently subsist as a right upon which we can rely in the face of the state of public emergency. If something does not exist, it cannot be described as being threatened.

The real tragedy, though, is the extent to which a people who rely so heavily on the fruits of our collective and individual expression to establish our bona fides in the world are now prepared to ignore its absence. Almost everything that means anything to Trinidad and Tobago has been founded upon the renegade, pioneering, irreverent, creative genius of our people.

Yet, freedom of expression and the regulatory means to achieve its lawful derogation reside in the basket of current restrictions with precious little publicly-stated discomfort. In fact, there are those who are insisting on more active pursuit of their punitive application. No dissent, one partisan commentator went so far to remark, must be entertained.

The impact of the suspension of free expression has also not been a passive, benign threat, as has been suggested by some, but an active factor in the prevailing climate of awkward and unpracticed vulgar defiance, self-censorship, silence and undue restraint fuelled by fear. 

It is simply not true to say that only the criminals are affected by the state of emergency and that “freedom” can be a possible outcome of a derogation of freedoms. This is crooked thinking and a misuse of metaphor. Such an assertion is dangerous political sleight of hand often witnessed in established autocracies.

Indeed, even the ruling coalition has been minded to close its own doors to online expression. Its Facebook, Twitter and listserv dispatches have been shut down on the grounds of possible transgression. Could it be an inducement for others to do likewise? 

Lurking agents of suppression meanwhile dutifully share casual online banter and ole-talk for further action and voices of even the most remote flavour of dissent are cast in the dungeons alongside criminal suspects, dreaded trade union activists and the political opposition.

Suddenly, freedom of the press is viewed as eminently dispensable even by some in the press; as long as the curfew permits and advertising flow, I suppose. Who from among us, in this masochistic fantasy, dare fly a flag of freedom?

Freedom of expression is not remotely equivalent to Trini freeness and license. It is a foundation upon which modern societies erect democratic structures to ensure that laws bring justice, creativity brings solutions and dialogue brings action. Much of this is captured in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which asserts the application of such a right not only with respect to those who impart information and ideas, but also those who seek and receive it.

Free and unfettered dialogue is also important in building social consensus without which societies cannot go meaningfully forward in peace. But how many more from among us are there who are satisfied that free speech is acceptable only when it is their own clearly partisan speech?

This is nothing new. Short-sightedness and blinkered sycophancy are longstanding, enduring features of our political life. The situation would not have been tolerated by current proponents had the political balance been different.

None of this, by the way, has anything to do with the validity or invalidity of the current constitutional intervention – however unconvinced I remain about it. My advice from those far from the haze of the emergency is that this country may have a lot of explaining to do to its international partners regarding arbitrary use of emergency powers and the militarisation of civilian functions. Diplomatic good manners do not signify approval.

This also has nothing to do with the desirability of firm action to counteract extreme behaviour. I have heard no one attempt to defend the thugs, murderers and deviants who roam this land and no tears are to be shed by me for brutes and sub-humans who kill, rape and maim. 

The problem is in the midst of the storm, independent spaces remain almost completely unoccupied – victimised by the black and white of political under-development and under-achievement. Witness the futility of debate on the emergency in parliament. We all knew the outcome and we all could have written the script for the proceedings in advance. Nobody listened to anybody else.

This is more than a crisis involving our rights and freedoms, I fear. It is a death by suicide.

A State of Emergency

So it has come to this - a state of emergency to address the shortcomings of the police, judiciary, executive and people of Trinidad and Tobago. A solution to the violence and crime is thought to exist through the suspension of rights. The boots and guns are now in charge – a virtual takeover of the state by the state.

On the radio, the partisans present their respective, predictable cases. It is not a time for independence in the month of Independence. It is a time to be silent and to wish and hope that the boots don’t somehow come your own way.

In the background we hear the applause of the mob and the nervous, muted disapproval of the others. Should I or shouldn’t I? This is the chilling effect of prison bars and boots and guns and garbled official announcements – the silence of those with questions and the pronouncements of those with answers.

It has come to this. Who is really surprised?

A Caribbean Spring?

Some thoughts at a seminar on the 10th Anniversary of the Inter-American Democratic Charter  at UWI, St Augustine on June 17, 2011

To the surprise of many, press freedom advocates usually recoil defensively when the words “role” and “support” follow reference to the work of the mass media. This is so because there is a belief that active, explicit promotion of notions of development and the processes that drive it tends to lead to a path paved with many dangers that may undermine journalistic independence and free expression. This is especially so when we consider the increasingly fashionable suggestion that the best way to a version of development is through the suppression of the democratic process. Which would you prefer, the question has been asked, food or freedom?

Recent events have also raised difficult questions related not only to the true meaning of democracy but the precise nature of the modern media themselves. Are the new media of the Arab Spring the same as the old media we have known for all our years? Is the work of Wikileaks an act of intrepid journalism or the product of reckless, vindictive and lawless voyeurism?

Such questions are being actively engaged by many of us who propose that the fundamental tenets of free expression remain unambiguous and, in their juridical and other applications, indivisible. Such an approach finds as much space for the bloggers of Damascus as they do the duty editors in our newsrooms.

The Inter-American Democratic Charter we pay special attention today, assists in negotiating this somewhat difficult terrain. Article 4 defines five essential components or characteristics of the exercise of democracy - transparency in government activities, probity, responsible public administration on the part of governments, respect for social rights, and freedom of expression and of the press.

This, of course, is reinforced within the inter-American system through the OAS Charter itself, the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and several leading judgments at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. They all guide us to the essential principle, expressed in the Democratic Charter, which subordinates state institutions in all their manifestations to civilian authority – or, put another way; which prescribes a process that places power in the hands of the people.

In the English-speaking Caribbean we do not - unlike most of our neighbours of the Americas - concern ourselves with any form of autocratic relapse, having escaped the phenomenon of military dictatorships of the recent past. But the ability to relocate the core axes of power remains a relevant concern.

For this reason, it is not inconceivable that our winters of discontent will someday lead to our own Caribbean spring. And where would this find the estates of power and influence? Practitioners of new media have displayed a striking ability to offer timely, unrestrained coordinates and traditional media are wrestling with ways to meaningfully join the dots.

It is the expectation that even as we embrace new ways of doing business, the fundamental principles of fairness, balance and accountability emerge as dominant features of the media landscape.

Article IV of the American Declaration reminds us of the right of communicators to investigate, to express opinions and to disseminate ideas through any medium, while Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights clearly establishes freedom of expression as not only the right to communicate but also the right to seek and receive information and ideas.

Freedom of the press thus presents itself not only as the preserve of communicators, but also of those who seek such communication and those who wish to receive it. The media are therefore not only an instrument for the achievement or sustaining of democracy, but are themselves an integral function of the democratic process.

Seek out those countries in which uneasy conditions prevail between the governed and those who govern and you will find the role of the mediators of the relationship in jeopardy and under constant threat. It is as much true to contend that a free press is hard to find under conditions in which democracy does not thrive as it is to conclude that democracy is unlikely to prevail in the absence of free speech and a free press.