Embracing New Media

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World Press Freedom Day 2012

May 3, 2012

Observance of World Press Freedom Day 2012 provides the Caribbean with an opportunity to take stock of its progress as a region in which rights and freedoms are held to be fundamental pillars of the development process.

This day focuses exclusively on freedom of expression, under whose cover freedom of the press permanently resides.

Though we have generally escaped the worst impacts of impunity, violence and official aggression, Caribbean social communicators and journalists have not eluded the potentially muting impacts of self-censorship, unenlightened regulation and challenging economic, social and political circumstances.

For this reason, our advocates are often minded to craft unique responses to unique conditions and to influence international discourse on such subjects on an unprecedented scale - not to build a deceptive, relativistic case as obtains in some territories in our region, but to help light the path to fundamental rights and freedoms in a changing region and world.

In this context, the theme of this year’s observances - New Voices: Media Freedom Helping to Transform Societies – is entirely appropriate as a reflection of the requirements of Caribbean development and change.

As relatively new nations, Caribbean societies have also, in many respects, been the new hemispheric voices of the past 50 years. We are now called upon to be more aware of the new voices within our midst.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova have asked the world to pay greater attention to the new players on the media stage and are urging greater recognition of and protection for new media practitioners. Indeed, these new social communicators are increasingly attracting the attention of enemies of the free press and, in some parts of the world, are being targeted for persecution to a much greater degree.

We must work to ensure the platform we share as both traditional and new media workers remains untouched by the hands of official censorship and that journalistic principles are promoted as common values among us all.

On this important day, the ACM urges its national affiliates to pay greater attention to building institutional capacity, engaging a wider cross-section of the communication industry, working more assiduously to promote the reform of media-related laws and operating as fearlessly independent agents of awareness and the change it brings. Those organisations that are in crisis must be rescued and those that are asleep must awaken. This is a sacred responsibility we ignore at our peril.

Media and Politics in Guyana

The vagaries of a minority government in Guyana unfolded dramatically as parliamentary debate on a G$192 billion (TT$6.4 billion) budget ended recently in Georgetown.

On more than one occasion, ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP) partisans, senior public servants and high-profile state officials and agency heads picketed parliament in a manner described by one local journalist as being more reflective of the actions of opposition parties over the years. The PPP has been in power since 1992.

Senior executives and employees of the state-operated National Communications Network (NCN) and Government Information News Agency (GINA) were on the streets protesting cuts to their budgets proposed by the two opposition parties in parliament without whose support government’s budget estimates could not have been approved.

The situation arose following November 28, 2011 elections which saw the PPP winning 32 seats – one seat short of a majority in the 65-seat National Assembly. Twenty-six of the remaining seats went to A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) opposition coalition while the Alliance for Change won seven seats determined under the country’s system of proportional representation.

As a consequence, local wags have been noting that there has never been such a consistent incidence of 100% parliamentary attendance and high level of consultation among the political parties.

But opposition moves to reduce state subventions to state media have led to a bizarre string of developments.


Prior to the NCN/GINA demonstration, for example, live coverage of the second cricket Test match between the West Indies and Australia in Dominica was suddenly suspended when an NCN panel including the station’s Chief Executive Officer, Mohamed Sattaur; Programme Manager Martin Goolsaran and Editor-in-Chief, Michael Gordon appeared on-screen to explain their opposition to the proposed cuts.

Radio audiences on some services had also earlier been met with “dead air” as NCN shut down the country’s lone radio station overnight and television viewers lost signals from NCN’s television service when the state broadcaster shut down their Linden transmitters.

NCN Chief Executive Officer, Mohamed Sattaur, explained the disruptions in service were necessary “because we are just making people aware that the cut in the subventions will have consequences.”

At issue, in this instance, were cuts separately proposed by the APNU and AFC to subventions emanating from the office of the president to the media agencies. Payments to “contracted employees” constituted the most contentious slice of the cuts and wrangling over cuts there had been intense, but recommended reductions in capital and current subventions to the two state media agencies led to the unprecedented developments in the state media.

Proponents of the APNU/AFC cuts at NCN have referred to a March 19, 2012 letter to AFC Chairman, Khemraj Ramjattan, in which Sattaur claims that up to 90% of the Network’s revenue is derived from “our commercial activities.” One government minister even testified in the debate that the agency had collected over G$500 million (TT$16 million) in advertising revenues in 2011.

The correspondence and subsequent official disclosure appeared to blunt the claim by the service that the reduction in subventions will lead to a heavy loss of jobs, cutbacks in broadcasting times and an inability to perform NCN’s traditionally supportive work in the areas of religious diversity, culture, fashion and sport.

The NCN CEO confirmed that the company’s broadcast services were heavily supported by commercial activities with close to 15% support from the state. The AFC proposal (the APNU had filed a separate motion on this issue) completely removes the G$81.2 million (TT$2.7 million) subvention on current expenditure, while the APNU was proposing abolition of a much smaller subvention under another budget heading.

Former Information Minister, turned leading AFC MP, Moses Nagamotoo, said he fully supported the cuts, notwithstanding his dogged defence of NCN activities while he was in office. He served as the first minister of information in the 1992 PPP administration under the late Cheddi Jagan but resigned from the party in 2011 following a protracted period of conflict with former president, Bharrat Jagdeo.

The NCN is widely criticised for ignoring opposition viewpoints and is described by former line minister, Nagamootoo, as “almost a PPP party outfit.”

During coverage of last year’s elections, it came under the critical scrutiny of a Media Monitoring Unit established under the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to monitor adherence to a code of media conduct during coverage of the polls.

“We are voting against more money for NCN because we believe it is biased, it is unfair, it is partisan and is almost a PPP party outfit that is used to sledge-hammer the opposition in Guyana,” Nagamootoo said.

Sattaur however contends that NCN services are much more than transmission of government programming, some of which is provided by GINA. As part of NCN’s “awareness” campaign on the issue, interviews are being conducted with persons from a variety of backgrounds attesting to the value of the station as a promoter of non-commercial interests private stations would readily support.

NCN currently employs 152 permanent and 70 contract workers in an operation that competes with 17 private stations. When voting on the subventions occurred, the PPP, with just one seat short, lost the state media battle.

In the National Assembly, four video cameras were positioned to capture the government benches and a side-view, at best, of opposition MPs. One solitary camera - "a PNC camera", this reporter was told - faced the APNU/AFC benches. Two of the group of four were NCN and GINA cameras.

This did not help the situation.

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.