Intervention at OAS Permanent Council

Washington DC - December 7, 2012

Everywhere in the Caribbean we now reflect on times when persistent social, economic and political challenges had not as much tested our will and resilience as a people as they currently do.

As an organisation of journalists and other media workers, our members are close witnesses to all of this and prepare the first drafts of history not as passive observers but as active subjects of such change - freedom of expression being our principal asset.

Our interest in ensuring a future built on the foundation of unqualified support for human rights and the conditions that assure essential freedoms is thus not open to negotiation. Our partners within the Latin American and Caribbean Alliance of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange all share this uncompromising position.

We all view the role of the Inter-American Human Rights System as indispensable. However estranged from its processes Caribbean member states sometimes appear, had there not been such a mechanism for mediating questions of con-compliance with accepted norms, we would have had, in 2012, to invent such an institution.

Indeed, there is perhaps space for greater professional Caribbean participation and more direct acknowledgement of the contributions we already make, but there is no excuse for indifference to the requirement of a strong, independent and appropriately resourced infrastructure for monitoring and reporting trends and violations.

We are, in this regard, particularly concerned that Chapter 6 (of the OAS) recommendations will have the impact of significantly weakening the Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression by compromising its independence and weakening its resource base.

We in fact propose a more concerted effort to elevate such a function of the inter-American system to a position of greater influence and prominence. Recent actions to repeal criminal defamation in some Caribbean territories and growing recognition of the need for access to information laws provide us with some confidence that this sub-region is ready to reflect collectively, as we often do, on a question of grave relevance to our future as sovereign states.

Development achieved in the absence of freedom and rights is guaranteed not to persist over the long term. This is especially so when we recognise the interdependent relationship between economic, social and cultural rights and the civil and political rights we cherish and are prepared to strenuously defend.

Is Press Freedom Under Threat in Trinidad & Tobago?

There has not been a period in our history that the free press has not been threatened or under attack. This has to do with our essentially authoritarian culture – a predisposition we find not only in the rulers, but in the ruled. I cannot say with confidence that we are all opposed to the notion of censorship. I cannot say that people, in general, are in agreement with the view that a free, unfettered press is good and not bad for our society.

Were we to possess such an orientation, we would have been greater inclined to attend to matters of the media in a much different way – by considering the value of information as a social good, by believing that the potential impacts of media content are best measured using science and not guess-work, by knowing that better societies are built upon the foundation of diverse views, analyses, perspectives and truths.

What we have before us today in Trinidad and Tobago through the voices of the political leadership has been heard before. It is the assertion of authoritarian control. It is the result of the view that opinions, information and analysis are the exclusive preserve of those who govern. It is the conscious undermining of a belief in freedom as the basic condition under which citizens assert their places in society.

If people understood what freedom of the press and freedom of expression mean to us as a developing country, we won’t have to engage this constant struggle to assert rights we should have long taken for granted. 

Impunity and Free Expression in the Caribbean

Efforts to encourage Caribbean journalists and others to observe the Day to End Impunity in 2011 were spectacularly unsuccessful. This owes much to the fact that the word “impunity” is not one that resonates very clearly in the public domain in this part of the world.

This is not because freedom of expression and other freedoms are not successfully curtailed without any recognisable consequence for perpetrators, but that our authoritarian culture, derived from a repressive colonial past and dysfunctional political culture, does not readily predispose many of us to easy recognition of acts of impunity.

For example, when a newspaper editor is threatened and defamed via a concerted email and online campaign in Trinidad, there aren’t high expectations that the person suspected of being behind it will ever be brought to justice. It is written off as a joke.

Likewise, concerted efforts to smear the characters of two female investigate journalists in the same country are dismissed as intolerance by the media for the views of anyone but their own.

This year, the campaign to end impunity will focus on the plight of Guyanese newspaper columnist, Freddie Kissoon, who has been physically attacked on more than one occasion, including instances in which he has been punched and had faeces thrown on him. There is hardly a body of public opinion signally outraged that despite very good clues, no one has ever been brought to justice for these crimes.

Recognising that freedom of expression does not only include the write to express oneself, but the right of others to seek and access such expression, an act of impunity can also said to have prevailed when the state broadcaster in Guyana deprived persons from one part of that country from accessing its radio and television signals because of contentious budget cuts owing much to the interventions of the political representatives of that region of the country.

Acts of impunity may also occur when labour laws, the right to associate and the right to assemble are breached. For example, there was the recent case of a senior journalist in Grenada who was dismissed by his Barbadian publisher on highly-contestable grounds related to a story he refused to retract and which was later found to accurate. The conditions of his dismissal appeared clearly to conflict with existing industrial relations norms and there is the view that a level of passive complicity has been displayed by the government of Grenada as a response to what some contend is an act of injustice.

Many in the international free expression community sometimes also have to be convinced that someone need not be killed, kidnapped, tortured or jailed in order to be silenced. Silence can come from the loss of a newspaper job, the fear of public castigation or shame when the threat of embarrassing personal information looms and the manipulation of otherwise valid regulatory conditions related to the operations of broadcasters.

A culture of impunity can be said to be in existence, according to the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) “when those who seek to control the freedom of expression of others do so knowing that it is unlikely they will be held accountable for their actions.”

The impact of such a culture of impunity can be recognised in the Caribbean environment without searching very far. Despite our claims of public candour and overflowing creative expression, there are taboo issues many would not touch, many of which challenge existing political orders.

Haiti is not representative of the rest of the Caribbean in this, but the unresolved murders of Jean Dominique, Brignol Lindor, Jean-Rémy Badio, Robenson Laraque and Ricardo Ortega send a very ominous signal. In Guyana, broadcaster/political activist, Ronald Waddell was killed six and a half years ago with neither a prosecution nor conviction forthcoming.

IFEX warns us that all of this can lead to a world in which people are afraid to speak out. Where criticism is stifled. Where the hard questions don’t get asked. Where the powerful don’t get challenged. The result is a world where free expression is silenced.

This is the scope and scale of the challenge for us in the Caribbean.

Some thoughts on press freedom advocacy in the Caribbean

My views on the work that needs to be done in the Caribbean.

The Hijacking of Caribbean Journalism

The recruitment of journalists for both open and covert political work in the Caribbean is a longstanding practice that has spanned many years. No current political administration should feel overly targeted or victimised by the claim that they engage in this practice, either openly or quietly. They’ve all done it.

For journalists, the lure of better salaries, a sense of job security spanning at least a five-year political term and work in an area about which they are acutely aware are attractions that too often prove irresistible.

The subject was debated at the last International Press Institute (IPI) World Congress, hosted in Trinidad, without clear direction in the end, on the feasibility of moving freely from one such vocation and back.

But it has happened in the past and will continue to happen. If change comes at the end of a five-year term, journalists often swap places between the newsroom and the state house.

What is unacceptable, though, is the fact that some working journalists, broadcasters and media functionaries are known or suspected to be, with some degree of certainty, to be on discreet political payrolls.

This worsens the already bad situation in which small societies with close-knit communities are inherently prone to a high degree of self-censorship. So, journalists omit important facts, de-emphasise the importance of some developments in their reportage and provide advance warning of imminent journalistic interventions, even without the promise of a cheque.

This happens on all sides of the political battle-field.

Today, more sophisticated means are being found to mask the corrosive incidence of journalistic dishonesty. New media platforms are hijacked by partisan commentary, media phone polls are flooded by well-financed activists employed mainly to undermine the integrity of already unscientific opinion research and influential journalists are rewarded to offer manipulated views of the reality.

All of this poses, in my view, the most critical challenge to journalistic independence in the Caribbean at this time.

Much of the press freedom advocacy, training and media literacy work that need to be done can virtually come to nought if the hijacking of journalism by money and deals wins in the end.

So far, independent journalism, flawed and brittle as it is in this region is standing its ground. But only just …

ENDING CRIMINAL DEFAMATION IN THE CARIBBEAN

This is an op-ed published by the International Press Institute

Criminal libel law was born in Elizabethan England as a means to silence unwelcome dissent. Today, while the press plays an essential role in shaping public discourse worldwide, in many Caribbean nations these same archaic laws live on.

Often there is no clear demarcation or standard for determining the line between fair criticism and criminal offense. In the past two years, Caribbean criminal defamation cases have included a government official who charged a previous campaign opponent with the crime, as well as a lawsuit which resulted from accusations made at a town hall meeting.

These cases exemplify the elasticity of laws wielded by those in positions of power, and underscore the capricious nature of their implementation. The mere threat of prosecution often chills investigative journalism and free speech. It also helps to sustain corruption, unnecessarily protects public officials, and is used to deny the fundamental human right of freedom of expression.

In short, criminal libel law is one of the most pernicious media constraints in contemporary society. Implemented at the will of any “insulted” public official, it frequently leaves no recourse for the defendant.

In response, the International Press Institute (IPI) has been actively campaigning for the removal of criminal libel laws, along with numerous civil society and media partners throughout the region.  Banishing these unnecessary and arbitrary laws, and utilising civil remedies as alternatives are the goals. 

Substantial progress is being made, even as the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Organization of American States, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights joined together recently to name criminalisation of defamation as one of the ten biggest threats to freedom of expression.

For example, via a series of IPI press freedom missions in Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, the governments of each of these nations have now publicly re-stated their commitment to an independent press.

In June, IPI hosted a World Congress event in Trinidad, whose delegates collectively endorsed the Declaration of Port of Spain. Calling for the immediate abolition of "insult laws" and criminal defamation legislation throughout the region, the Declaration also states that "the Caribbean urgently needs a strong, free and independent media to act as a watchdog over public institutions".

Governments often argue their need for strong measures as a defence against scurrilous journalism, however free societies are founded on the open exchange of opinions, popular or not. Certainly, while repercussions for careless or slanderous speech are necessary, they should, if necessary, take place in civil courtrooms, not jail cells, and as the result of regulations which both allow for, and encourage, active dialogue within a safe public marketplace of ideas.

We’ve evolved a great deal since the 16th century origin of these antiquated criminal libel laws. However, in the 21st century, stifling public discourse and institutionalised repression cannot stand in nations which adhere to democratic principles. And so while many Caribbean countries have already publicly repudiated criminal libel, we now call upon these same governments to join in the progress of freedom of expression, to recognise their existing criminal libel laws as detrimental, and to finally remove them from their books once and for all.

Journalism, Globalism and New Technologies

The introduction of new information technologies to the communications industry has significantly changed the media workplace and applicable business models. Worldwide, media proprietors and managers are wrestling with new approaches to pervasive and irreversible mass media phenomena.

One unfortunate outcome, for example, has been the shrinking share of finances now being devoted to newsgathering and dissemination within media organisations.

However, throughout the years, while some important modalities of production and distribution have changed, the basic value systems driving the practice of journalism have generally remained constant. What is different is the degree to which the continued commoditising of news has influenced a standardising of production values in the print, broadcast media and, now, online and social media – the latter now ironically contributing to a virtual “de-commercialising” of news and information.

Time-worn news values are also now increasingly being met by a standardising of lower production values, facilitated by much faster, more pervasive, less expensive means of transmission. The recent IPI Congress in Port-of-Spain explored the challenge this poses to the traditional media industry and found that a variety of successful and unsuccessful coping mechanisms are being employed.

The ‘fit’ between domestic Caribbean media outputs and international media content is now much more technically snug. This not only facilitates the easier implanting of externally-produced content, but the more efficient exporting of domestic material. I am not, in this respect, impressed by xenophobic pronouncements on “rescuing” indigenous creative content. Trinidad and Tobago has much to gain because of open, liberal conditions.

This situation has clearly offered a variety of challenges and opportunities.

There is now a greater degree of multi-tasking and a resulting elimination of some human tasks. The implications for journalism are also recognisable through much more easily accessible non-indigenous content and the net negative impact of multi-skilling in the production of both print and broadcast media products.

There is growing concern about authors’ rights in the face of changing relationships between content-providers and media operators and the greater efficiency with which news outputs can now move across national boundaries. Not much has however changed with respect to work contracts in the traditional media and their appropriateness in the new era is often questionable.

What remains clear, though, is that enhancing the production and flow of reliable, journalistically-mediated, news and information to our societies can considerably address concerns related to the strengthening of democracy and the need for transparency in the conduct of public affairs. The free press, acting in concert with open government can have the effect of instilling greater degrees of confidence in the future. This certainly constitutes benefits way in excess of clear challenges.

The Caribbean mass media are, however, no newcomers to globalisation and the revolutionary nature of new technologies. Newspapers were first established in the English-speaking territories as far back as the mid 18th Century at a time when primary production for export to European markets, under conditions of colonialism, dominated the socio-economic landscape. Mediated information flows generally pronounced on the relationship between productive capacity in the Antilles and the state of a European market in the throes of dramatic change.

The Industrial Revolution had already begun to change the way Western Europe conducted its business. In trend-setting Britain, the drive to industrialise was fuelled in large measure by the availability of captive markets for manufactures in the colonies and a state of relative peace at home and in the overseas territories.

Newspapers provided a way of reinforcing a status quo which, by and large, co-existed well with rapidly changing circumstances. They served as efficient advertising vehicles for new products, reinforcing geo-political alignments and ensuring the smooth flow of information between the colonial homelands and their overseas operatives. So important was this role that by the mid 1800s, there were more than 100 indigenous newspapers in the colonies.

Radio reached Caribbean shores in the 1930s and television in the 1960s, under circumstances that were no less associated with the fact that the future of the West Indies continued to be inextricably linked to overseas market conditions for primary products and the growing importance of these territories as markets for outputs of the new technologies. The mass media, in that regard, were both a facilitator and a subject of these developments.

Improvements in printing techniques and their impacts on the newspaper workplace could not, in the early years, be qualitatively de-linked from important changes in the modes of production in the agro-processing industries, which, in some instances, provided important inputs into other changing technologies.

Globalisation and change were thus inherent features of the colonial condition in the West Indies with the mass media providing both a mediating role in the dissemination of information on the colonial condition, to both internal and external audiences, and a participatory role as the subject of these phenomena. In the process, a journalism developed which played as much a role in interpreting external circumstances as it focused on the internal condition of the colonies. The challenges today appear to be essentially the same – along with the many new opportunities that have become available.