MAKING OUR WAY IN THE WORLD

The Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM) has been able to keep the Caribbean firmly on the international press freedom agenda over the past six years of its existence.

I believe we have done so by capturing, in our own clumsy way, the vital connections between the work we do and the work left to be done by our societies.

This often means that the sounds of the street, the songs of the farmers, the cries of the higgler and the pain of our youth often enter the studio. Engaging the job as we have, invites dissonance and discomfort. It is both an inherent peril and a benefit of free expression.

The ACM is also, in another regard, singularly important as a Caribbean beacon. The recent meeting of Latin American and Caribbean press freedom agencies and international institutions covering the region, in Austin Texas, was one example of how ‘out of sight’ could so easily mean ‘out of mind’.

It was instructive that many delegates attended the meeting, as in the past, with a version of what comprises Latin America that excludes Caribbean islands states beyond Haiti and Cuba (and to a lesser extent, Puerto Rico).

It took my own intervention in Jordan a year and a half ago, at the first Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) to impress upon participants, not only from Latin America, that while the Caribbean and its mainland neighbours might be friends and even brothers, but we are not the same person.

The distinction is not meaningful for jingoist purposes (though this is certainly the case in some Caribbean quarters) but as a means of capturing the nuances of a region whose cultural antecedents are so similar, but at the same time decidedly different from the Latin American experience. Indeed, the same would certainly hold between countries of South America. Argentina is not the same as Uruguay and even Colombia is not the same as Venezuela.

The Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, led by Brazilian journalist and academic, Rosental Calmon Alves and based at the University of Texas at Austin, has made a critical and perhaps unprecedented difference in this matter.

The recent LATAM/Caribbean meeting of press freedom agencies, hosted by the Knight Center with support from the Open Society Institute, provided a meaningful forum for discussions on methods currently employed by the international organizations concerned with monitoring press freedom issues.

The English-speaking Caribbean stood out for the manner in which our experience showed that the silencing of journalists is not only a function of the assassin’s bullet or the kidnapper’s mask.

The Caribbean media are being slowly suffocated by political cultures, economic circumstance, social disabilities and official policies that scavenge on our misfortune as emerging nations that survive without enduring and ancient democratic and cultural habits.

The insidious nature of the assault and the fact that it is not readily recognised even by Caribbean journalists makes the task of the ACM even more difficult.

In the end, we may have to make it in the world on our own, but only if we choose to do so.

Press freedom and its parent, free expression, are absolutely essential for our survival as viable societies. There is no natural reason, inherent in the history of the world why we should exist on our own. That we speak of independence is a wonder. That we dare speak of achieving it is more.

Had we not already had the ACM in 2007, we would have had to invent one. Independence in the field of journalism is to be earned. There is no lottery here.

DEFAMATION LAWS

One encouraging sign from the new administration in Jamaica is the promise by Prime Minister Bruce Golding to reform existing defamation legislation.

Hopefully, the Caribbean journalistic community will monitor very closely the undertaking expressed during Golding's inaugural speech to: "review the libel and slander law to ensure that it cannot be used as a firewall to protect wrongdoers."

This brings some context to current difficulties being experienced by journalists in Grenada and Dominica who are now (if they were not before) acutely aware of the "firewall" impact of such legislation.

In the process of removing this impact of civil defamation, I hope in the future all governments move on to completely eliminate criminal libel.

CARICOM OR NO CARICOM?

THE CLOAK OF INTEGRATIONIST RHETORIC

Wesley Gibbings

One of the most important aspects of the CARICOM Single Market project is the fact that international convention and domestic legislation are meant to be supported by a philosophical commitment to broader social, economic and even political integration.

Even the protracted hangover produced by the failure of the political union of 1958-1962 was eventually overcome by a sense of overwhelming economic necessity and the slim prospect that survival through critical mass might somehow be achievable. This made believers out of many. The prospect of economic death is one helluva thing.

There is no doubt, there have been both the open and quiet non-believers in the CARICOM platform (though, not necessarily its goals) - Jamaica’s Edward Seaga and Trinidad and Tobago’s Basdeo Panday being the two most notorious over recent years.

“CARICOM,” the former Jamaica Prime Minister wrote in a newspaper column last December, “is likely … to face a slide, not a climb, in the future.”

Panday’s lethargic performances on the CARICOM stage and at wider hemispheric fora always had the potential to portend his eventual, hypocritical about-turn on the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) and his lack of commitment to an interactive, regional paradigm beyond 15,000 voters in the Couva North constituency.

Today, we are witnessing an equally disturbing trend which bears unfortunate witness to the claim that Trinidad and Tobago’s continued engagement in the single market process is entirely a function of enlightened self-interest. In this event, resort to law and convention and not to the philosophy of regional unity seems to suffice. It’s like the ‘work to rule’ strategies of trade unions made public policy.

This indeed is the product of Antigua and Barbuda’s official response to the expulsion of journalists Vernon Khelawan of Trinidad and Tobago and Lennox Linton of Dominica and the pronouncements of this country on the issue.

Continued reference to the ‘letter’ and not the ‘spirit’ of the regulatory provisions to facilitate the free movement of CARICOM nationals through the region is ample proof of a lack of political commitment.

What has been worse, in this particular instance, has been Trinidad and Tobago’s response to the expulsion of a national of this country from another nation whose leaders have time and again sounded the integration trumpet. Foreign Affairs Minister, Arnold Piggott, has responded by reference not to the ‘spirit’ of the free movement arrangements, as has Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, but to the ‘letter’ of the law.

The best that Piggott has offered is the view that “there is the right of any immigration authorities in any country to deny entry, if they have good reason or if they grant entry to an individual and later decide otherwise, to revoke that entry.”

Skerrit, in contrasting style, immediately phoned his Antiguan counterpart and went on to publicly declare:

“We are hoping that agreements taken at the heads of government meeting when we head back to our respective countries we can in fact pass the required domestic legislation to give effect to it from a national standpoint, because people are already experiencing difficulties where we have agreed to proceed with the free movement, but there has not been a commitment in terms of our own legislation within the member states with respect to allowing for the free movement of persons.”

The entire scenario, is also, of course, in direct contravention of a 2006 CARICOM decision that where existing facilitative legislation does not exist, countries can exercise a regulatory prerogative to facilitate the entry of CARICOM citizens in the recognised work categories.

That neither Piggott nor CARICOM Ambassador, Jerry Narace, has prima facie given the benefit of considerable doubt to Khelawan might well be more a function of treasonous indifference than a lack of knowledge and commitment to single market aspirations. But their inaction contrasts sharply with Skerrit’s and, subsequently, Bharat Jagdeo’s vigorous defence of their nationals.

It is noteworthy, that at the last CARICOM Heads of Government Meeting in Barbados last week, Antigua and Barbuda was the only country that expressed reservations about a plan to introduce an automatic six-month stay provision for CARICOM nationals and said it would not immediately accept an expansion of the work categories to benefit from free movement.

To invoke the other, not unrelated issue, it is not that Antigua and Barbuda is any less committed to press freedom than the other countries in question. In Guyana, the Jagdeo administration is trying its best to bring the Stabroek News to financial ruin; in Dominica there is a looming broadcast code and in Trinidad and Tobago we have only for now beat back a proposed code that imposes new levels of official censorship.

The Khelawan/Linton issue has provided the entire region with an opportunity to see through the cloak of integrationist rhetoric. It is a phenomenon not unmitigated by the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas whose public service framers sensed, and therefore anticipated hypocrisy and impunity.

It is to our discredit that none of the countries party to this situation has at least subscribed to the role of the CCJ as a court of original jurisdiction on matters related to the Treaty. This way, Khelawan would have had the option of a binding response much more effective than the lame and disgraceful reactions we have witnessed from Knowsley up to now.

Thou Shalt Not Be A Hypocrite!

Now, read this editorial from the state-owned Guyana Chronicle. Good going, President Jagdeo (though you need to keep your word on the Stabroek News state advertising boycott). As for you, Prime Minister, Baldwin Spencer, your underwear is showing.

GUYANA, HOME of the CARICOM Secretariat, is clearly on the offensive to give more practical meaning to what is a most vital people-oriented issue---free intra-regional movement of nationals of our Community.


Having made quite an impressive impact at last week's 28th CARICOM Summit in Barbados with his criticisms against the continuing hassle and prejudices being experienced by Guyanese at some airports, such as Barbados and, to a lesser extent, Trinidad and Tobago, President Bharrat Jagdeo played an influential role in the significant decision for Community nationals to stay as long as six months on arrival in any member state.


While discussions were taking place over the recent expulsion of two regional journalists from Antigua and Barbuda, one of them armed with a valid CARICOM Skilled Nationals Certificate, and on wider concerns for expansion of categories for such certificates and more effective monitoring, President Jagdeo went public with his call for removal of existing discretionary powers of immigration officers in determining length of stay for nationals with valid passports.


Subsequently, on the final day of the Heads of Government Conference, the Communique released by the Community Secretariat was to announce the "agreement" reached--except for a "reservation" entered by Antigua and Barbuda--for all Community nationals to be "allowed an automatic six-month stay on arrival in another CARICOM member state".


This should prove quite a relief to Community nationals, and particularly Guyanese, Vincentians and Jamaicans, who have had harrowing experiences at some ports of entry for holiday or business, when confronted by unfriendly and even hostile immigration officers.


Anxious as he evidently is for this new six-month stay policy to be implemented, President Jagdeo has lost no time in announcing that Guyana would take the lead by making a reality of this significant development in intra-regional movement of nationals effective from this week.


The intention is for reciprocity for Guyanese by other CARICOM partners, consistent with the collective decision taken at the summit.


In the absence of details on the framework arrangement for enforcement of the six-month stay agreement, it is assumed that the Guyana Government would have in place the necessary regulations empowering immigration officers to automatically stamp "six months" in the passport of an arriving national from another CARICOM state.


The example given for this new policy is that of the United States of America where a common stamp is used to indicate a six-month stay, even if those arriving would be gone, in a matter of days, or weeks, back to their respective countries.


However, those on a "watch list" for security purposes, or who violate the laws of a CARICOM state by any criminal act, should not expect to benefit from this new umbrella arrangement for an automatic six-month stay on arrival.

MISLEADING LEADERS

CARICOM leaders clearly have a problem keeping their word, especially on matters related to the integration movement. Take the recent expulsion of Trinidad journalist, Vernon Khelawan and Dominican broadcaster, Lennox Linton from Antigua and Barbuda where they, without doubt, helped to add value to the media landscape there.

It is particularly irksome that at the time of these painful events, Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer was making preparations to put on the best regional face for George Dubya in Washington DC.

Had there not been a regional platform ie. CARICOM for him to make his grand stand, Antigua and Barbuda would not have enjoyed its few seconds in the American sun and the photo-op lapped up by the Antigua press would not have been possible.

I shall be following the upcoming CARICOM Summit very closely to hear what praises to the regional movement Mr Spencer makes.

I am also gravely disappointed that Trinidad and Tobago has abandoned Vernon Khelawan as a citizen against whom a great wrong has been inflicted. Nowhere has there been the urgency or pain as expressed by Dominican Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerritt following the expulsion of Lennox Linton.

Once again, Trinidad and Tobago has failed an overseas citizen.

I have not forgotten the manner in which appeals from my cousin, Richard, to Foreign Affairs Minister, Arnold Piggott, were absolutely ignored when my family thought the murder of Richard's son, Robert, was being covered up by Bermudian authorities last year.

A letter written by Richard to the Minister was neither privately nor publicly acknowledged. No political points at stake, I suppose.

Eternal vigilance remains the key.

CHALLENGES TO CARIBBEAN JOURNALISM

Overview of major developments affecting the practice of journalism in the Caribbean

Wesley Gibbings
General Secretary
Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers

Rodney Bay, St Lucia – May 2, 2007


The ACM has found that in order for freedom of the press to be pursued there need to be permanent institutions concerned with addressing issues of professional development, interested in developing mechanisms to promote institution-building and engaged in highlighting the need for enlightened commercial and political environments conducive to free expression.

It can be surmised that most difficulties currently associated with real and perceived threats to the free press emanate both directly and indirectly from these factors. For example, deficient professional performance and standards can be linked to oppressive official sanctions designed to rein-in elements in the media deemed to be reckless and recalcitrant.

Political pressure can take the form of actions distinctly commercial in nature. For example, the withdrawal of state advertising to CaymanNet News in the Cayman Islands in 2004 was in response to politically unfavourable journalism, so too the current withholding of state advertising in the Stabroek News of Guyana.

There is also evidence that commercial advertising is frequently used as an instrument of effective prior censorship and that the concentration of media ownership in some instances, particularly by business conglomerates, can lead to a high incidence of self-censorship to protect business interests.

There appears to exist a thread of connectivity among all these elements of the media dynamic in the Caribbean. Low professional standards, defective media institutions, adverse political circumstances and uncompromising commercial interests, conspire severally and collectively to create conditions that militate against the free press in the Caribbean.

Consequently, there cannot be a discussion on the current stream of restrictive telecommunications regulations in the Caribbean without also examining questions of professionalism in the practice of journalism and institutional capacity within broadcast media houses. This is not to suggest that the penalty for poor journalism or undeveloped media outfits should be punitive laws and regulations, but that an essential connection exists and should be recognised.

It is certainly preferable that, however imperfect, the media ought to be free to publish and journalists ought to remain unfettered in the exercise of their duties.

The debate on broadcasting regulations in Grenada is not, therefore, without strong relevance to the 2006 debate on the introduction of a Broadcast Code in Trinidad and Tobago. The objective antecedents appear to be the same. So too, must we regard a proposed media policy in Guyana and the effort by the government of St Lucia in 2005 to formulate sanctions within the country’s criminal code against communication that could have the effect of “injuring the public interest.” The controversial amendment was later repealed.

It is no coincidence that some of these new measures occur at a time when the broadcast media, in particular, have expanded at an unprecedented rate without a corresponding enhancement of professional capabilities. More has not meant better – though more always presents a better possibility of greater things emerging. The more frequencies you have, the greater the chance that the diversity this medium offers can be realised.

There is a way of making the point that more has not meant better which borders on resentment of the new voices that have emerged and the suggestion that the traditional platforms have recently played a superior role in advancing the cause of freedom and democracy. With few exceptions, can anyone tell the difference?

Now that we understand some of these basic submissions, we must consider what needs to be done to ensure that this combination of sometimes complex factors do not undermine the freedoms to which we are committed.

Should the cost of free speech remain limited to passive professional tolerance of the indiscretions and malpractice of some in lieu of official intervention?

Needless to say, censorship including situations of prior censorship through licensing regimes, needs to be resisted. There is no question about it and we should never yield to the temptation to release the cross that we bear – the high cost of a free press and free speech. There is no room for compromise on this.

Most certainly, this is not a prescription for anarchy since we also assert the value of longstanding legal principles which pronounce on questions of defamation, privacy and exceptions to the coverage of selected matters related to court and parliamentary proceedings and the safety of individuals and groups.

However, it must be our prerogative to challenge such provisions and to build rational cases to support our various contentions. For example, the modern world is finding less and less space for the prosecution of criminal defamation cases. Outright censorship of books and movies and music is also an anachronism not accommodated in the age of the internet and new multimedia technologies. Even so, the Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago signalled in 2006 that its sights were also set on internet content for regulation. Nothing more needs to be said about this. The same language has emanated from the Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica.

Some of our countries have correctly adopted ratings systems that are steps in the right direction. As far as the monitoring of media content goes, there are statutory agencies such as the Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica and the various telecommunications agencies and non-governmental, self-regulatory mechanisms such as the Eastern Caribbean Press Council and the Media Complaints Commission of Trinidad and Tobago.

In an ideal situation there would be none of this. But such a condition does not now exist.

It is preferable that we find internally-generated mechanisms to provide the obvious direction we require. We must continue to insist that the best media law is no media law and the strongest, most effective regulation is self-regulation.

If we begin the debate from the perspective of how much freedom we need to surrender we miss the point of its inherent value in shaping better lives and better societies. There are too many examples of the failure of official regulation to create the conditions for more enlightened, democratic societies.

The best journalist is the free journalist, which is not to say that all free journalists are good journalists, but that those who are free are best positioned to excel and to serve the public interest in the way the profession was meant to do.

A VISION FOR CARIBBEAN PROGRAMMING

NOTES ON A VISION FOR CARIBBEAN PROGRAMMING – Wesley Gibbings, San Juan, Puerto Rico, February 11, 2006

It is extremely difficult to discuss a vision for regional media programming without addressing fundamental issues related to a broader vision for the Caribbean. The difficulties we have had in bringing indigenous media outputs to the broadcasting mainstream owes as much to questions of production values as to an underdeveloped sense of self.

It is not that we have been completely oblivious to the requirement of a new Caribbean aesthetic in the development of our own media, but that we have somehow always embraced issues of marketability in terms solely of what is externally acceptable. This now happens even as the global market is turning in on itself to the extent that internal/external dichotomies are fast disappearing. It would however appear that cultural products remain among the last bastions of continued discrimination … some say protection.

I have never, in this regard, supported official regulation as a device to guarantee airplay for domestic programmes and music. It contravenes basic principles of free expression and fair business practice and vainly attempts to legislate taste. Hopefully, greater numbers of Caribbean media people will strongly repudiate attempts to impose quota systems in their respective radio and television systems.

Current parochial formulations also willfully dismiss notions of a Caribbean paradigm. The current formulation in Trinidad and Tobago, for example, would place the music of Bob Marley – the greatest West Indian that ever lived - in the category of foreign content. No one has also thought about where we would place externally-located musicians such as Sean Paul and Heather Headley or filmmakers Horace Ove, Menelik Shabazz and Isaac Julien.

This belief that we can be in the world and not of it betrays a deficient sense of self-worth and our people would do well to snap out it sooner rather than later. West Indians understood and defined the global system long before almost everyone else. Our past was founded on the principle of a global marketplace. We participated both as subjects and as objects of the process.

There are few lessons of globalisation we can be taught but yet so little we seem to understand.

Our approach to tourism as a viable source of income and a generator of economic activity suffers from the same malaise. There is no way we can reasonably address questions of service in the sector without understanding the psychology of entrenched servitude. If you also want to talk about branding and selling you have indeed come to the right place! The double entendre is absolutely intended.

This is why, for example, the dissonance between indigenous food production and tourism in most of our countries. There is no sense that the activities of the past can so intrinsically contribute to imperatives of the present and future. Instead, we continue to display a far more remarkable ability to feast our visitors than to feed ourselves. The tourists bring the foreign exchange in and our food import bills take it out again. In the language of the Trinidadian school child, we are spinning top in mud.

The vision must first turn inward to see what we can see of ourselves. This is not to suggest that we repudiate the vast contributions of those who have sped along the highway of development, but that we also look now at the footprints we leave in the wake of the steps we take on our own narrow, dusty path with far more confidence than we have in the past.

Our mass media and our own faltering, uncertain and sometimes maddening steps also provide cause for concern for some of the same reasons. Cable television, satellite broadcasts and the Internet have helped defy attempts by our societies to impose regimes to control and regulate what we see, read and listen to. The new technologies have, gladly, made nonsense of attempts at regulated cultural protectionism, censorship and other forms of official control.

So concerned have we been with imposing new and higher levels of regulation and control that we as societies have abandoned the injunction to seek the creation of better societies – people equipped with the skills to distinguish between trash and treasure. This, to me, is our task. Not to write more laws that stifle free expression. But to reach the hearts and minds of people under siege from violence, inequity and poverty.

My vision for Caribbean programming thus embraces all that there is in the world, because we are in the world and the world is in us. Here in this oasis of movement and sound and colour and great love, it is a vision of a better place. A place that is free. A place the songwriter calls the land of hope and glory.

There is much for our cameras, sound recorders and pens to capture and much more for us to set free. It is time for us to move forward with far more confidence than we have in the past.

Pablo Neruda said these words when he accepted his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971:

“Each and every one of my verses has chosen to take its place as a tangible object, each and every one of my poems has claimed to be a useful working instrument, each and every one of my songs has endeavoured to serve as a sign in space for a meeting between paths which cross one another, or as a piece of stone or wood on which someone, some others, those who follow after, will be able to carve the new signs.”

Writers, producers, broadcasters, these are your marching orders for this century as a Caribbean people, engaged in building a future, committed, confident and free.