Baby Steps to Liberty

The announcement that Trinidad and Tobago is moving to repeal some aspects of the country’s Libel and Defamation Act is good news to anyone with an interest in press freedom and freedom of expression. The Kamla Persad-Bissessar administration was proud enough of the move to have the proceedings broadcast live on state radio and television and the story led the evening news on state-owned Caribbean New Media Group (CTV).

As International Press Institute (IPI) Executive Director, Alison Bethel-McKenzie, remarked at the joint press conference to make the announcement the development was “significant” and should not be underestimated in value. A similar sentiment came from Trinidad and Tobago Publishers and Broadcasters Association (TTPBA) President, Kiran Maharaj.

I agree that the development is important because it signals the willingness of the government of Trinidad and Tobago to pay attention to what should be an important area of concern to everyone. It is not that there have been any recent instances where these particular provisions of the Act have been applied, but that their very existence can have a chilling effect on the freedom to publish.

It is, however, a “baby” step – not a wobbly, uncertain move forward by any means, but a small, deliberate step along a rather long road. The left foot is now planted on the ground, now for the right, and then again and again.

For example, Section 9 of the Act which addresses the issue of “malicious” publication of defamatory content is to be deleted. But this leaves Section 8 which punishes malicious content that is deemed by a court to be knowingly false. In the end, this section too must go. So must the concept of seditious libel expressed in the country’s Seditious and Undesireable Publications Act and something called “blasphemous libel” under the Criminal Offences Act.

More than that, a great deal of work needs to be done to create conditions that do not lead to a level of self-censorship which, those who are honest about it would concede, is pervasive. As I have said at more than one fora, journalists are rarely kidnapped, injured or killed in the Caribbean but many of their stories die. Stories are “killed” by the chilling effect of draconian legal sanction and by small, closed communities, advertisers and publishers who either do not wish to offend or are concerned about the protection of people and interests with which they are associated.

At press conference announcing
amendments with (from left) Alison
Bethel-McKenzie, IPI; Kiran Maharaj,
TTPBA, T&T Prime Minister
Kamla Persad-Bissessar

Historical antecedents and trials along the way have also left these small former British colonies in the West Indies handsomely clad in authoritarian coveralls. The instinct to resort to the draconian is quick. There is, everywhere, the charge of “too much” freedom and liberty and the relativist assertion that perhaps we are all too small and underdeveloped for the truth to always be recognised and told.

This is not an easy one. It is also not the duty of the TTPBA or the Media Association or the ACM alone. It is instructive that the legal analysis of this issue was undertaken not by the Law Association or any conscientious human rights group (none exists), but by the Vienna-based IPI.

What is required to make any further progress on this issue, as well, is an enlightened citizenry motivated by a vision of freedom and liberty and a commitment to have all ideas and expression contend. Our society, as a whole, has also been taking nothing more than baby steps in such a direction.      

Media Performance and Press Freedom

Let’s get it clear from the start. Media performance and press freedom, though sometimes  connected, are not the same issue.

The one thing people need to understand about human rights is their universality and indivisibility. Political partisans in Trinidad and Tobago currently suggesting that supposedly sloppy or partisan media should not benefit from press freedom are, for the most part, deliberately missing some important points.

For one, press freedom was never meant to be for the press alone. Like its parent right, freedom of expression, press freedom is meant to be the preserve not only of primary communicators but those who seek out such communication and those who consume and regurgitate or interpret it.

As time has passed, such mass communication has increased in interactivity to the extent that the line between primary and secondary producers of media content has become shadowy at best.

When viewed this way, press freedom has to be everyone’s right; not just the media’s.

We knew this all along, didn’t we?

No.

The penalty for sloppy or unprofessional or defiant expression can never be silence. The penalty should also not be threats and acts of intimidation. Let’s see what has become standard fare:

i. revelations about personal indulgences by journalists

ii. their tax status

iii. threats to the job security or insecurity of family and friends

iv. threats of physical violence

v. online and direct harassment

vi. cyber-stalking

vii. anonymous online defamation via email lists and social media

viii. economic boycotts of media enterprises

The list is long. But these are only a few examples of what Caribbean journalists and media enterprises have become used to within recent years.

There is also the suggestion that journalists have “thin skins” and respond too quickly to the slightest sign of unintended threats.

Journalists are right not to take any chances! Acts of violence and intimidation against journalists are growing worldwide, not shrinking. They begin as idle chatter and, too often, end in silence achieved through self-censorship, threats and actual physical violence.

Among the protagonists of the view that journalists over-react are, ironically, media colleagues badly compromised either by an inability to contain their political enthusiasm or resist the lure of supplementary personal incomes. The Caribbean media are no exception to the growing emboldening of such partisan elements in the press. This does not, at any time, diminish their own claims to freedom but weakens the professional base from which they operate.

In the 15 Caribbean countries I have visited many times, I do not see proof that this is not the same throughout the region: a government changes, and with it the commitment of a recalcitrant minority to press freedom.

Those who stay the course are most subject to the worst vilification, ridicule and slander. The latest attacks on the free press in Trinidad and Tobago have already produced an abundant share of such actions. Such roguishness seldom goes unpunished by enlightened public opinion over the long term. History supports this view.

For some strange reason, this sounds so familiar to me with my 30 years’ experience in this business.

Crime Rant

Very soon, suspects accused of committing blue colour criminal offences will face the following scenario in Trinidad and Tobago:

(1) Members of the military, with unclear relationships with two important institutional checks and balances against police abuses, will become a part of general policing activities. The heads of both the Police Complaints Authority and Police Service Commission have publicly expressed concern;

(2) There will be no bail for persons facing allegations of drug trafficking and weapons possession, with our without previous convictions;

(3) There is a move to eliminate trials by jury;

(4) The return of capital punishment. A former senior minister in the current administration has said he has no problem with public hangings.

Meanwhile, persons against whom white colour criminal offences such as fraud have been directed:

(1) Refuse to honour inquiry subpoenas;

(2) Stand to benefit from bungling associated with a law widely suspected to have been drafted to secure their release without a full trial;

(3) Occupy VIP parking spots at some state institutions;

(4) Will not be caught dead on state transportation.

So, soon, a person committing murder can be captured by someone trained to kill, remain in prison while a tedious judicial system gets to work, face a judge without a jury and be promptly hanged.

Someone charged with corruption can rely on a sluggish system to run 10 years from commission of an offence before being freed of the charge, while on bail, while attending the best parties, while funding political parties and receiving state favours in return and while passing the rest of us on the highway.

Dropping the Human Rights Ball

I was particularly moved by the words of the iconic Guyanese diplomat Rudy Insanally recently when he spoke of the chances our tiny but potentially mighty region is missing out on, if only because of a lack of effective application of our sheer numerical strength on the international stage.

It is my firm view that opportunities to influence the global and hemispheric agendas are not as much stymied by the fact of occasional displays of disunity as by a problem of low self-esteem.

Amb. Rudy Insanally

Certainly, short-sighted displays of disunity are heavily influenced by delusions about individual self-importance on the part of micro-states surviving purely on their wits and the goodwill of imperialist powers past and present. However, occasional grand-standing at the regional level is heavily tempered by a lack of self-confidence on the international stage.

One current discourse being almost absolutely ignored by the 14 independent Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member states of the OAS is the attempt by several Latin American countries to water down the influence of the Inter-American human rights system – the focus of critical debate by countries such as Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela (which is now set to leave the human rights system entirely in September this year). These are countries that have not enjoyed the best relationship with either the inter-American Commission or the Court.

There is little doubt in the minds of most reasonable people, that the strategy being devised by what is now appearing to be a majority of Organisation of American States (OAS) countries is to weaken the reach and influence of an independent-minded set of institutions – the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Inter-American Court of Human Rights – in order that the abuses of a number of recalcitrant states may continue unrecognised and unpunished.

Our small 15-member grouping (Montserrat is not independent and not a member of the OAS), has the power to dramatically influence this discussion.

Instead, it appears as if Jamaica is the only country keeping close tabs on the process – holding an albeit lukewarm position on the central issues through Amb. Stephen Vasciennie, an accomplished human rights attorney and professor.

When I spoke at a special civil society consultation of the OAS Permanent Council last December, Prof. Vasciennie was the only senior Caribbean diplomat in the chamber at the time. My own Trinidad and Tobago ambassador, Neil Parsan, was absent and though my participation in the consultation had been announced before-hand through the CARICOM caucus within the OAS, nobody seemed to think it was important enough that a lone Caribbean organisation had taken the time and trouble to make its voice heard on this issue.

OAS Building, Washington DC

Amb. Insanally’s remarks at the launch of his latest work on diplomacy resonate throughout this particular episode in the life of CARICOM participation in the inter-American system.

Or is it that we have countries among us with leaders who believe that having strong hemispheric oversight over issues of human rights is a bother that needs to be addressed?

Regrettably, I think this might well be the case.

My own efforts through the Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM) to loosen the state grip on press freedom and freedom of expression over the years have amply prepared me to deliver a verdict on this.

It does not surprise me that so many of our countries would rather turn the other way, or hold their noses while chronic human rights offenders in this part of the world run rough-shod over a system we all agreed would help bring us into the international mainstream of respect for the rights of our people.

But this, of course, is not only a matter for national governments. The malignant neglect reflects negatively on the work of Bar Associations throughout the region – impotent bands of self-interested and greedy professionals who are more and more turning their backs on issues of human rights.

Where, for example, is there a functioning Caribbean human rights association? Why is it, that apart from Jamaica and Guyana (to a lesser extent) there are no effective national human rights organisations which survive the election of their chief advocates to government?

Why is it, that on the question of the erosion of the influence of the inter-American human rights system, the ACM – a press freedom organisation with extremely limited resources – remains a solitary Caribbean voice in the human rights wilderness?

The worst-case scenario is that Caribbean authoritarian cultures will coalesce too comfortably with the remnants of Latin caudillismo at the expense of freedoms our societies sacrificed so much to possess.

The OAS discussions will paint a much clearer picture as we go along.

The Caribbean Embrace of Censorship

I remain startled by the fact that so many Caribbean media practitioners and creative folk enthusiastically embrace official censorship and have a tendency to invite such intervention even when those with an interest in restraining free expression don’t initially appear interested.

It is true that free expression sometimes carries with it the hefty price tag of gross irresponsibility, atrociously poor taste and the incompetence of some communicators, but inviting the censors to do what ought to be achieved through self-awareness and self-confidence presents our societies with the worst possible remedy for authoritarian intervention.

There are several striking examples of this, one of which is application of intellectual property laws and regulations.

I believe we move into the dangerous terrain of criminalising speech and expression when we focus on increasingly draconian legislation to deal with the so-called “theft” of intellectual property. Strictly speaking, it’s not the property itself being stolen but the potential financial and other benefits of such property.

So, if you “steal” my poem and publish it as your own, I still effectively have possession of the piece, but am probably denied of any income derived from its subsequent sale as part of a collection of poems by someone else. Should a resolution of this be the arrest and detention of the “thief”?

This is what I confronted during a session at a recent workshop when journalists were practically imploring a chief of police to get involved in the “theft” of online newspaper articles.

Of course, the lifting of online journalistic content for either free or paid dissemination by someone who does not have a relationship with the writer is rather sickening.  I have been a victim of this many times. The practice has meant that as a freelance writer, I lose the opportunity to sell my stuff to a wider range of publishers when they can simply lift what I write for free from some other source – hopefully one that has paid me for my work.

What would satisfy me as the originator of the work would be some form of compensation for use of the article/s. I have no interest in a criminal prosecution. Neither should I. Such an approach invites law enforcement people to stand over the shoulders of everyone producing any kind of creative content.

By inviting the police to deal with this, instead of independent copyright agencies – who are also, hopefully, not greedy and dishonest as some of them are – who are staffed and trained to track, recover and punish those in the breach, we lose sight of the value of freedom to express ourselves freely and fuel the “big brother” aspirations of authoritarian leaders and officials.

The other area of concern is this thing about promoting indigenous creative content through coercion. Throughout the Caribbean there is this mindless hankering for official intervention to “save” what is called “local” content by legislating taste in the broadcast media.

In the first place, there is no sensible working definition of the term “local content” in much of the discussions I have heard on this subject. This is particularly so since, in the Caribbean, we have officially, through Caricom, sought to define a “we” in the context of the people who live in a defined social and economic space.

So under Caricom arrangements, for example, people, enterprises, goods and services are intended to eventually achieve equal status throughout the 15 countries that have signed the Treaty of Chaguaramas. This means that a (creative) good or service produced in Jamaica ought to have ‘domestic’ status in Grenada or Trinidad and Tobago or Guyana. The concept extends, in some respects, to other international agreements. But let’s focus on the Caribbean countries.

Some short-sighted, unenlightened musicians and other content generators in Trinidad and Tobago want “local” to be defined as “born, bred and resident in Trinidad and Tobago”. This nonsense belies the fact that some of our more outstanding performers reside outside of the country. The phenomenal David Rudder happens to be one. It also, more significantly, relegates the music of Caribbean icons such as Bob Marley and Eddy Grant to the level of “foreign” content outside of Jamaica and Guyana/Barbados (which one, Eddy?).

David Rudder the "foreigner"?

This defining of “local”, in turn, is meant to facilitate broadcast content quotas especially in the field of radio. In one instance, citing Canada as a shining example, there is a move to regulate no less than 50% “local” content.

Certainly, this not only contravenes basic conditions for freedom of expression but betrays an ignorance of the international agreements to which Caribbean countries have signed on to among themselves and with others.

How difficult it is to invoke the free expression perspective on these issues!

A more enlightened approach to the application of intellectual property law and a more sophisticated strategy to encourage high-quality creative Caribbean content will considerably help to establish the vital link between creative genius and the development process and not stifle the creative impulse.

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.