Reducing Reality to Rumour

During a memorable interview with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour in February 2011, the late Libyan despot, Muammar Gadhafi, was quoted as denying that people were demonstrating against him anywhere in Libya and that those who were making a fuss were perhaps on some kind of hallucinogenic drug. Even as he spoke, the city of Benghazi had already been overtaken by “insurgents” and thousands were massing in protest elsewhere.

The recent approval by the French Senate to ban denials of the “genocide” of Armenians at the hands of the Ottomans in 1915 was prompted largely by longstanding harsh repudiation by the Turks of the use of the word with reference to the killing of between one and one and a half million people. That huge numbers of persons were rounded up and later killed by Ottoman troops has never been categorically disproved as historical fact.

Guilty people and their leaders have long been inclined to reduce reality to the level of rumour. The word of the authorities and those generally in charge are afforded the weight of “truth” notwithstanding what are the first-hand experiences of people. In August 2011, for example, hoteliers and businesspersons in Barbados wanted to tear the head off the island’s Police Commissioner, Darwin Dottin, when he appeared to downplay the growing impact of violent crime and he waded into those whom he accused of promoting an environment of “panic” in the country.

One hotelier promptly blogged that his annual security bill was between US$30,000 and US$40,000.  He asked: Has a policy of “selective denial” by the authorities been adopted?

Of course, the first-hand experiences of thousands of motorists in Trinidad and Tobago on March 7, 2012 do not approximate the rising and fatal tide of discontent in Libya in 2011, neither are they equivalent to a genocide or an exponential increase in crime on an island otherwise known for its peace and quiet. But, the inclination to convert reality into rumour or exaggeration has just as amply been displayed via a disturbing press release from Trinidad and Tobago’s Ministry of Transport.

Darwin Dottin

From 6.00 a.m. to well after 7.00 p.m. on March 7, scores of police officers and traffic wardens fanned out throughout Trinidad in a series of roadblocks, pulling hundreds of vehicles to the side and demanding documents including inspection stickers and certificates. There were traffic jams leading into and out of Port of Spain, drivers fearing they might be in breach of vehicle inspection regulations pulled into side streets converting them into busy thoroughfares. In Curepe Junction, near where I live, there were no fewer than a dozen police officers directing selected vehicles off to the side of the road.

Many of us received Blackberry messages, email messages, Tweets, phone calls – people were being given traffic tickets for not having inspection stickers on their windscreens. It was the stuff of which typical Trini rumour would have been made, except this was no rumour. I witnessed it myself. Beat that for evidence!

Then came an email from a colleague asking essentially: “What is the truth?” Can it be, he seemed to ask, that we are all mistaken and the writer of the press release is correct? I mean, the Ministry of Transport had put out a press release declaring: “there are mischievous rumours being circulated that there is a movement by the Police Service and Licensing Officers to crack down on vehicles that require inspection.”

Okay, there might be a technicality regarding the use of the term “crack down” (isn’t it “crackdown”?). But, “mischievous rumours”? That seems to be pretty strong language to describe what thousands of people understood to be the truth.

Does this merit an entire blog post? It sure does!

One of the most important signs of authoritarian rule is the easy reduction of reality to the level of rumour by those who rule. These are some of the little signs older societies recognise very easily. If an event witnessed by thousands can be dismissed by a few words on a press release as mischief and rumour, how is it not conceivable that the rising of the masses can indeed be described as being the product of a hallucinogenic drug?

Just sounding yet another warning.

Journalistic Lives and Livelihoods

Caribbean journalists have been following the great international regret and interest generated by the deaths of Marie Colvin, Remi Ochlik and Rami al-Sayyed in Syria.

These developments have raised interesting questions related to the dangers of journalism, the relationship between 'mainstream' and 'citizen' journalism and the impact of the practice of journalism on politics and the exercise of power.

In the English-speaking Caribbean, we do not often lose our lives in the pursuit of journalistic practice, but it is not unheard of to have livelihoods and careers lost - the social ostracism that occurs upon publication of unpopular stories, the perception that some news has a way of standing in the way of 'development', the belief that we too often pay little regard and respect for officialdom and office.

In the end, some of us lose our jobs. Some resign to self-censorship and some simply retreat from journalism.

So often these days we hear journalists develop the case for less rather than more disclosure. Fewer stories rather than more stories. The establishment of 'boundaries' beyond which we should not reach, less we breach some vague notion of good taste, respectfulness or some arbitrarily determined border of privacy (particularly on the part of elected officials). Adherence to some form of situation-specific standard.

Scratch the surface of some of this advice and counsel and you find political preference and reward, underdeveloped professional standards and the caustic impact of self-censorship.

Collateral Media Damage

The February 9, 2012 police raid on the Newsday newspaper of Trinidad and Tobago and the home of journalist, Andre Bagoo, marked a significant turning point in relations involving the country’s media, officialdom and the population.

I have long contended that press freedom is not an instinctive rallying point for people of this small twin-island state (nor for the rest of the English-speaking Caribbean for that matter). That people are more culturally inclined toward direct, official censorship and regulation than they are toward unfettered media activity and free expression.

The Newsday raid, and ensuing intimidatory tactics by the police, generated largely negative comment. But many were those who wondered why the press seemed to want to do its work by operating “above the law.”

Indeed, this line of argument was initially invoked by no less a person than the Police Commissioner, Dwayne Gibbs, himself.

It might be that many, including this Canadian police executive turned Caribbean commissioner, are unaware of the special protection of the Constitution of Trinidad and Tobago which has as a specific provision in its Bill of Rights for freedom of the press.

The actions of the police also followed a report on the presumed leaking of information to the press from the country’s Integrity Commission, now chaired by former media entrepreneur, Ken Gordon – considered by many to be among the modern pioneers of regional press freedom activism. It was Gordon himself who threatened to get to the bottom of what appeared to be an unlawful sharing of confidential Integrity Commission information.

Few thought the action instigated by Gordon would have led to one of the more outrageous assaults on a media enterprise in recent Trinidad and Tobago history. Of course, both Newsday and the reporter have to date refused to disclose the source of the information for the offending news story – the content of which had later been confirmed by Gordon himself during a television interview.

Needless to say, the local representative media organisations – Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago and Trinidad and Tobago Publishers and Broadcasters Association – roundly condemned the raids. They were later joined by the Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM) and regional media organisations from Jamaica, Guyana and Grenada and international organisations such as Reporters Without Borders, International Press Institute, National Association of Black Journalists and others.

To date, there has been no serious, widespread activism and public reaction to the raids. Letters to the newspaper editors that have been critical or condemnatory have, by and large, been partisan in nature and have attempted to stimulate political debate on the commitment of the current administration to press freedom in an attempt to score political points.

Of course, such contentions might indeed be the case. But there is the question of moral authority on this subject, since there has been no political administration in the country’s 50 years of independence that can be pointed to as being genuine defenders of the free press.

Few have pointed to the potentially chilling effect of the police actions on journalists and the practice of journalism in the country. Will my home be the subject of a police search? Will the hard drive on my computer be subjected to a forensic examination? Will I be taken down to the local police station for questioning?

What can in effect happen is that the media may well temper their aggressive position of getting to the bottom of a growing list of matters of public concern and interest. It is not good enough for the politicians to simply speak of a commitment to press freedom.

A very similar event took place on December 29, when the police entered the premises of Caribbean Communications Network (CCN) in search of a contentious recording. The events leading to the search require a far more extensive examination than this quick blog entry. But the heavy police presence at CCN reeked of harassment and intimidation.

The police and their defenders, including some political activists supportive of the government, have pointed to the lawful nature of the raids. Search warrants had been properly obtained, and arguably legal bases for the raids had been established.

But when will our countries realise that something can be absolutely lawful and yet be completely wrong?

The other question that arises is the extent to which the three and a half month State of Emergency declared in 2011 which ended in December - ostensibly to put a serious dent on criminal crime and the networks that support it – may have contributed to a heightened sense of impunity by the police on the question of people’s rights.

Could it not be that the State of Emergency has emboldened a beleaguered, embattled police service to act as it has since December?

The turning point in relations I alluded to at the start of this submission has to do with the alignment of opinions on the question of rights and freedoms. Those of us who believe we can win the development game through the greater exercise of our freedoms appear increasingly to be among shrinking ranks.

The Newsday raid raised fundamental questions related to this dichotomy and some of us are not comfortable with what we are hearing as a response. Freedom of the press is subject to painful and even terminal collateral damage.

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.
.

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.