Greetings to the Caribbean Media Fraternity

The Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM) is wrapping up its busiest year since about a dozen of us assembled in Barbados in November 2001 and decided that we needed to re-invent an organisation of Caribbean media workers to carry the flags of press freedom advocacy, journalistic networking and the promotion of higher professional standards.

This year tested the abilities we have developed over the past 11 years in unprecedented ways. We undertook, for example, to function as local organisers in Trinidad and Tobago for the 61^st World Congress of the International Press Institute (IPI). It was one of the biggest media events ever hosted in the Caribbean with over 400 participants from North, Central and South America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific.

I pay special tribute to Kiran Maharaj, president of the Trinidad and Tobago Publishers and Broadcasters Association who co-chaired the Local Organising Committee and made many things possible that would have otherwise not taken place. Nylah Ali, Adelle Roopchand, Naylan Dwarika, Wendy Sealy, Fazilette McIntyre and Frances Lakatoo also contributed meaningfully to much of the preparatory work that needed to be done.

This year, we also partnered with several international and regional organisations for subject-specific journalistic workshops on food and agriculture journalism, reporting development issues, the environment, international trade, reporting on violence against children and covering international human rights. Close to 100 regional journalists would have participated in these events sponsored by UNDP, UNICEF, UWI, CARDI/CTA, Caricom Secretariat and UNEP.

In 2012, we also participated in press freedom missions in Jamaica and Barbados led by the IPI, with which we have a meaningful cooperation agreement, signed in 2011. Special thanks to IPI Director, Alison Bethel-McKenzie, for ensuring that the Caribbean remains in international focus on matters related to media development. IPI remains an important resource for professional guidance and institutional support.

We also signed a cooperation agreement with the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) with which we share many things in common. We hope to work with PINA in 2013 specifically on development of journalistic training resources on covering food and agriculture issues and generally on information-sharing measures. Like the ACM, PINA is engaged in media development work in a region of island states facing very similar challenges. Unlike the ACM, PINA is on the road to financial sustainability through its dual role as press freedom organisation and news agency (PACNEWS). We have agreed that there is much to learn from each other and the ACM has shared information on our work with developing journalistic guides on covering elections and climate change and our effectiveness on press freedom issues.

During the course of 2012, we also continued our active engagement in the work of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) – another very important partner and generous source of institutional support. Through the IFEX Latin American and Caribbean Alliance (IFEX-ALC) we were able to contribute to the first publication of a report on impunity in Latin America and the Caribbean and also to launch it in Guatemala in time for international observance of International Day to End Impunity 2012. The ACM also sits as a member of the Council of IFEX and is currently engaged in planning for the next General Meeting of the body in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in June 2013.

We have also been elected as an alternate member from the Latin America and Caribbean region of the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) which is an umbrella body of international media development agencies. Several Caribbean countries currently benefit from programmes extended by members of the GFMD. Our internal mandate has been to attract greater attention to the needs of Caribbean media outfits and their operatives. Most of these bodies are currently actively engaged in re-building media plant and operations in Haiti and several English-speaking Caribbean journalists have benefited from training programme and symposia hosted by other GFMD members.

But much more work needs to be done at home to build capacity and support for our national affiliates: Antigua and Barbuda Media Congress (ABMC), Barbados Association of Journalists (BAJ), Media Workers Association of Dominica - MWAD (dormant), Media Workers Association of Grenada (MWAG), Guyana Press Association (GPA), Association of Surinamese Journalists, Media Association of Saint Lucia (MASL, born in 2012), Media Workers Association of St Kitts and Nevis (MWASKN), Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago (MATT) and Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ).

In the New Year, we hope to work more assiduously with colleagues in St Vincent and the Grenadines to help establish a national association; with journalists in Haiti to identify a new partner organisation and with the Colegio Dominicano de Periodistas of the Dominican Republic to determine the terms of its engagement with the ACM.

We have achieved much with very little in 2012. All of our work is done on a voluntary basis by persons otherwise engaged in journalism and other communication work. This is not easy.

The current executive committee has established a series of sub-committees with responsibility for specific areas of activity. I wish to identify one sub-committee in particular, led by Second Vice President, Byron Buckley, which has focused on training. Through Byron’s fine work, we have been able to develop our own online training curricula for application in courses to be offered via the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas in 2013. My personal congratulations to Byron for the work he has done in this area.

As a result of commitments made by an international partner in 2012, our Assistant General-Secretary, Clive Bacchus, is also leading an attempt to launch a concerted programme of training on the coverage of food and agriculture issues in the Caribbean in 2013.

After 11 years of existence, there are a few people who merit special mention. Hopefully, we will someday recognise these colleagues in more tangible ways: Peter Richards, Bert Wilkinson, Nylah Ali, Clare Forrester, Angelica Hunt, Dale Enoch, Julius Gittens, Marvin Hokstam, Michael Bascombe, Tony Deyal, Lennox Grant, Raoul Pantin, Desmond Allen, Adelle Roopchand, Naylan Dwarika, Theresa Daniel, Nita Ramcharan and Vernon Khelawan come to mind.

We know we have not done everything as well as we should have and it is no great comfort that our international partners often marvel at what we achieve on an entirely voluntary basis. We are also aware that there are detractors who believe that our widening focus on human rights and freedom of expression is misplaced in the Caribbean context and that we would be better placed focusing exclusively on networking and strengthening the stock of journalistic resources. The fact is these imperatives are all highly inter-related and inter-dependent.

The ACM platform is also a Caribbean space which acknowledges a changing media landscape in which the new players are not only knocking at the door, but are actually shaping an entire infrastructure for the future.

The agenda we promote proposes greater freedom for all. We consequently oppose more restrictions under the dubious umbrella of “responsibilities” which, in most instances, has been code for self-censorship.

Press freedom, you see, is not an esoteric principle borrowed from libertarian “westerners” but an actual condition shaped by tangible laws, regulations, principles and practices. It is also not subject to cultural-relativism, now used as an excuse for human rights blindness and the belief that we are all too poor, too small and too ignorant to be free.

This is the broader challenge of the ACM as we enter 2013 and beyond – raising awareness, both within and without the new and old media industries, of the immediacy and pervasiveness of the threats that abound.

I wish all our members, friends and associates the best for the New Year and look forward to even greater support in 2013.

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.