Seven Killings: Unpretentious, edgy

Negotiating Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings is like exploring an unlit crack house at night shirtless and barefoot. At any minute, something can jump out at you or you can witness anything from raunchy, illicit pleasure to murder or you might simply step in fresh or old human faeces.

The 704-page epic Jamaican tale is no easy read and, most certainly, was no easy write. In the end, James has a Man Booker Prize for Literature to show for his pains and Jamaica a challenging, discomfiting new icon of high literary accomplishment.

Set in both onshore and offshore Jamaica – aka New York and Miami - the Jamdown dialogue has the potential to challenge the uninitiated. There is nothing affected or pretentious – no tourist rendition to earn the comprehension of newcomers.

Violence is heaped upon violence and the sex is sprinkled like sweet and sour escovitch on naked fish bones to the sound of Bob Marley and the Wailers. Hard to imagine in homophobic Jamaica the “battyman” gangster whose open secret festers and festers and is soaked in the blood of the murders that open and close the book.

There is nothing to comfort those who see in Jamaica and its politics the perverse romance of a socialist experiment gone wrong, a tourist paradise or the glamour of a musical superstar worshipped far and wide. The story of “The Singer’s” attempted murder in 1976, the famous 1978 Peace Rally that saw a joining of hands on stage and of criminal minds off-stage and the inter-connectedness of political warfare, drug trafficking and gang murder are on display in gory detail.

The more knowledgeable quickly recognise the voices of Marley, Manley and Seaga and the charred corpse of notorious gang leader, Jim “Don Dadda” Brown (Josey Wales, to James), who epitomised the corrupting influence of murderous drug money prior to his mysterious death by fire in a Jamaican prison in 1992 while awaiting extradition to the United States for drug racketeering and murder.

The veils are thin and the storylines faithful to the original plots designed to maintain political control and, through it, criminal turf. Or, as James challenges the reader, the other way around. In the process, Cold War tensions arise, inviting “the Cubans” and their bombs, covert CIA intrusion and the dishing out of guns to beat back the communist threat.

Most of the main characters epitomise the “rude boy” culture and much of the more memorable dialogue flows at the rate of the dub poet full of sustained fury. 

“Madness,” says gang member, Bam-Bam “is walking up a good street downtown and seeing a woman dress up in the latest fashion and wanting to go straight up to her and grab her bag, knowing that it’s not the bag or money that we want so much, but the scream …”

In New York, a conflicted senior gang enforcer for the Storm Posse finds relative peace and confronts his sexuality and his fate. “Think like a movie. This part you put on your clothes, boy wake up (but boy would be a girl) and one of you say babe, I gotta go.”

Then there is the woman in love and awaiting a plane ticket to the States from her white American lover. Once there, she imagines, she can build a better future. But he is going back to his wife. She stays back in Montego Bay. From her, the lines: “Two years since the election. Jamaica never gets worse or better, it just finds new ways to stay the same. You can’t change the country, but maybe you can change yourself.”

James undoubtedly deserves his place at the front of the line; A Brief History of Seven Killings its place at the top of the region’s literary accomplishments. The years have passed and so have elections. In what ways, the author challenges us through a hapless lover, have things really changed?

First published, in part, in the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian - January 14, 2016

Understanding Caribbean Immigration Issues

It's been five years since I wrote this, but I think it is worth some reflection now:

Media Coverage of Migration in the Americas – the Caribbean Migrations

Wesley Gibbings, Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers

University of Texas at Austin, Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas

September 10, 2011

The first question that arises when examining the subject of international migration and the Caribbean is exactly which Caribbean you are referring to. Is it the Caribbean represented by the Association of Caribbean States – 25 states sharing the Caribbean Sea? Or is it the Caribbean as defined by the treaty establishing the 15-member Caribbean Community and Common Market?

Even within the Caribbean Community grouping, one may wish to make a distinction between French-speaking Haiti and the former Dutch colony Suriname and the former British colonies. I will focus on the 13 English-speaking Member States of the Caribbean Community, which includes the mainland territories of Belize and Guyana.

These kinds of distinctions, though not generally reflected in hemispheric studies, are important since the socio-economic dynamics at play are relatively unique. The United Kingdom, for example, does not feature prominently in the emigration statistics for Haiti and Suriname. The early dynamics of immigration also differ considerably since many British colonies in the Caribbean were once used as clearing houses for African slaves en route to the United States in the 17^th Century. The eventual dominance of British colonialism also contributes to the fact that Caribbean immigrants today display a much higher level of English-language proficiency than other groups from the wider region and are today more easily accommodated into the education system and workforce of the United States than many other source countries.

Additionally, throughout the history of the English-speaking Caribbean, the only thing as profound as the effects of outward migration on our respective populations has been the centuries-long impact of a constant stream of inward migration – featuring both intra-regional and extra-regional inputs. We need not trace our steps back to the flow of the early Amerindian inhabitants or even the15^th century conquests of the Portuguese and Spanish to make the point.

But it would be useful to note that our countries experienced net population gains as a result of immigration right through to the 1800s and that later growth in numbers included inflows related to the end of slavery in the British colonies, the nurturing of new settlements driven by increased trade and commerce with Europe and, in the case of Trinidad and Tobago, the transplanting of ex-slaves from what is now the United States of America.

To this day, for example, there are villages in Trinidad named for the military companies these early African-Americans fought under as soldiers for the British in the War of American Independence. A small number of freed American slaves also moved to several Caribbean islands, together with indentured labourers from Madeira, Germany, England and, to a much greater degree, from India.

The movement of significant numbers of people back and forth is therefore nothing new to people of the English-speaking Caribbean. With the exception of a small number of indigenous groups, few families can lay claim to longstanding genealogical links from within the Caribbean region. The Caribbean, in a sense, comprises quintessential immigrant societies.

Today, population outflows greatly outweigh immigration inflows – though we probably need to more closely examine the impact of Guatemalan and Honduran inflows into Belize, Brazilians into Guyana and Haitian refugees reaching Bahamian shores - to cite a few noteworthy examples.

Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago are cited in the statistics as being among the biggest gross contributors within the English-speaking bloc to an overall legal Caribbean-born immigrant population of over 3.5 million in the United States. The wider diasporic community, including persons born in the US, is in the vicinity of 6 million.

The official figure for Jamaicans comprises 435,000 documented immigrants, though the general suspicion is that well over 1,000,000 Jamaicans currently reside in the United States – both legally and illegally. 

The official figure in 2009 for Trinidadians and Tobagonians who hold United States citizenship is a little under 165,000. The total figure for all immigrants is probably much higher, but the very nature of the official and unofficial processes to eventually gain residency prevents us from more specific figures.

With respect to Guyana, which is not counted among the ‘Caribbean’ countries in the official international statistics, it is estimated that more than 400,000 Guyanese live in the U.S. and Canada. This is more than half of the current population of a little over 770,000 in a country than spans more than 215,000 square kilometers – about a third the size of the state of Texas. According to one diplomatic cable dispatch, recently published by Wikileaks, more than 6,800 Guyanese legally migrate to the USA every year.

The “push” factors of political and economic conflict and hardship, coupled with the “pull” factor of familial and other links in the United States together with generally stringent immigration procedures combine to create conditions under which the US embassy in Guyana was moved to note what it described as “rampant” fraud in the execution of family-based and other petitions to secure settlement in the United States.

In all instances, though, outward migration to the United States and other developed countries invokes a number of key issues relevant to Caribbean development. The United Nations Population Division identifies the net migration rate for the Caribbean as being among the highest in the world. Guyana, Jamaica and Saint Lucia have, in per capita terms, been the front-runners. Caribbean immigrants as a group accounted for roughly 3.2 percent of unauthorised immigrants in 2009.

Among the major consequences has been a phenomenal loss of skills in selected areas. For example, the 2011 Report on International Migration in the Americas notes that between 20 and 30 percent of emigrants from Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, the Bahamas, Belize, Dominica and Grenada are employed in nursing. There are corresponding studies that determine the net financial loss on training investment in this area.

Caribbean immigrants have also been found to be more likely than other immigrants to have graduated from high school and a gender imbalance has been observed - Grenada (60.1 percent women), Barbados (58.3 percent women), Trinidad and Tobago (56.1 percent women) and Jamaica (55.7 percent women). This has a bearing on some peculiar features of Caribbean migratory trends including what Prof. Sheila Velez, an ACM associate and professor at the University of Pittsburg School of Law, describes as the “feminisation” of migration.

Among other things, this phenomenon as indicated by Prof. Velez, expresses itself in the nature of the financial remittances of immigrants. The statistics show that while women account for 52.5 percent of all migrants to the United States they are responsible for 58 percent of the remittances sent back home.

This is important, since remittances are, currently, among the most important sources of external finance to many developing countries. They surpass foreign aid in most instances and are second only to foreign direct investment. In Latin America, remittances from the United States account for about 75 per cent of all such financial transfers from abroad. The financial crash of 2007-2008 impacted directly on remittances with the figures for Latin America declining from US$69.2 billion in 2008 to US$58.9 billion for the year so far.

The region’s inherent vulnerabilities as small island states also predisposes it to peculiar challenges such as vulnerability to natural disasters, a shortage of resources to police coastlines to counteract human and narcotics trafficking, sovereign boundary issues because of the proximity of the islands to each other and limited economic prospects particularly on the part of younger members of the workforce.

Agencies such as the International Organisation for Migration therefore focus heavily on issues such as human trafficking, the promotion of inter-state dialogue, building capacities in migration management and operational procedures, promoting migrants’ rights (including access to health care), increasing income-generating options in post-conflict and/or post-disaster, unstable environments, and facilitating labour migration.

In such approaches, Caribbean journalists find abundant fodder. But among the more spectacular phenomena, regularly reported in the Caribbean media, associated with regional migration to the United States has been the high incidence of criminal deportations back to the islands.

A 2007 World Bank Report noted that between 1993 and 2004, Jamaica alone absorbed up to 1,200 criminals a year. This has presented a serious issue of social re-integration – in many instances involving people with limited knowledge of the countries to which they are being returned.

Members of the Caribbean diasporic community also play an important role in directing the social discourse not only on issues of immigration but on pivotal social and political issues. The contribution of overseas nationals to political campaign financing has also recently become a contentious issue in many Caribbean countries, the prevailing view being that such contributions tend to generate a disproportionate share of post-election rewards back to overseas political investors.

Journalistic coverage of these issues can benefit from a more wholesome understanding of the true nature of the phenomenon of Caribbean immigration into the United States. Caribbean governments are much more efficient at releasing figures on tourist arrivals than they are at publishing statistics related to those who leave our shores. This is understandable for a number of reasons including the fact that not all persons who leave without an intention to immediately return are required on standard immigration forms to do so. There is also a high level of political reticence by ruling administrations on the issue of citizens desirous of doing so on account of economic, human rights and other social reasons.

Some immediate issues that currently necessitate more ample coverage and journalistic understanding would include:

1. The incidence of re-migration and degree of official and informal receptivity to persons who have live abroad and now wish to return on a permanent basis;
2. The processing and treatment of criminal deportees – many of whom no longer have any meaningful ties to their home territories and some of whom have much better developed criminal skills than their domestic counterparts;
3. The role of the Caribbean Diaspora in the United States is both significant and influential. There is an established link, for example, between political campaign activity and the financial contributions of overseas’ nationals at times of elections;
4. There is fairly reliable, ongoing research on high levels of financial remittances, but little knowledge of retention rates – the extent to which remittance expenditures are repatriated on US goods and services;
5. There is a need to more fully disaggregate the incidence of intra-regional migration, in part because of the existence of the CARICOM Single Market, and broader extra-regional inward migration to address the perception that Caribbean countries continue to host a burdensome disproportion of regional nationals;
6. Within recent years, there has been an upsurge in new migrants from the African continent, India and, most significantly China. Much of this has arisen out new business and investment initiatives on the part of a growing number of Chinese businesses. The impact on inward migration has been noticeable.

The issue of Caribbean immigration, both the inflows and the outflows, represents one of the more remarkable features of the global people-scape. We are said to be present virtually anywhere, especially in the United States, where we have contributed richly to the political, economic, social and cultural aesthetic of one of a land so many of us call our second home.

Digital Security for Caribbean Journalists

Forum of Caribbean Community Media Partners

November 26, 2015

Hilton Rose Hall Resort and Spa, Montego Bay, Jamaica

It is one of the ironies of the modern era that our greatest technological assets are presenting some of the world’s more intractable challenges. It is, of course, possible to take the argument back to the impact of the Industrial Revolution in Britain during the late 18^th into the 19^th centuries and the emergence of a consumer revolution there which, in turn, helped galvanise and fuel the trade in slaves across the Atlantic right here in our lands where production for consumption in the colonial motherland was the primary activity.

I often follow discussions on what we have been calling a process of globalisation and wonder sometimes if people understand the extent to which our societies in these former colonial outposts have been a part of the internationalising of production, commerce and trade. Depending on the history class you attended, globalisation has been a feature of our lives centuries before the World Trade Organisation received its mandate 20 years ago.

I make this point to indicate that however much we consider ourselves immune or distant from both the benefits and the challenges of what the planet, its people and its resources have to offer the world is very much in us to the full extent that we are in the world.

When in 2013, therefore, Edward Snowden left his job at the National Security Agency in the United States and released thousands of classified documents to journalists, notably Glenn Greenwald of the UK Guardian, the subject of those leaks ought to have aroused the interest of people everywhere, journalists in particular.

Greenwald’s stories lifted the tightly compressed veil from a massive effort by at least two countries – the US and the UK – to coordinate efforts in a mass surveillance exercise the true scope and nature of which continue to unfold. One disclosure of not more than a year ago, for example, is that the NSA has been in the habit of monitoring every single mobile phone call being made to and from The Bahamas.

Whether we consider him to be a whistle-blowing hero or a traitorous criminal, Edward Snowden’s leaks welcomed a gigantic elephant into the room where we assemble to discuss the delicate intersection of privacy rights and national security imperative.

We will not be able to arrive at any conclusions here today, but we can certainly explore a number of dilemmas that confront us as media practitioners at different levels.

We have engaged a task which embraces two different seemingly contrasting processes. For one, our media have an interest in the shaping of an environment in which there is free and open access to public information. In fact, with very few exceptions, it is desirable that all publicly-held information should be available for accessing by all citizens including journalists.

On the other hand, we have an equally compelling motivation to resist intrusion into the conduct of our own professional affairs as journalists and, indeed, as citizens. Internationally, there are now organisations that work on uncovering surveillance practices around the world, and advocate for strong privacy protections.

This came home to Trinidad and Tobago when the government changed hands in 2010 and it was revealed that for at least eight consecutive years, the authorities had been compiling files based on the telephone conversations of labour leaders, social activists and journalists. This was followed by the passage of legislation which closely resembles an emerging menu of laws in developing countries dealing with official interception of private communications including emails, text messages and phone calls.

In Trinidad and Tobago, the Interception of Communications Act prohibits such practices except in instances where there is a national security consideration or in instances where a crime punishable by 10 years or more in prison is involved. Within the first year of the new law, there were more than 250 reported interceptions – most of them linked to counter-narcotics investigations. We do not know how many convictions were achieved as a result. I suspect the figure would not be impressive. The state is not very efficient at prosecuting itself.

In Jamaica, a law bearing the same name has been in place since 2002 and was amended in 2011 to enable the authorities to disclose intercepted communications to other governments provided they meet set public interest stipulations. This followed the Manatt-Dudus Commission of Enquiry.

A closer look at this kind of measure merits another discussion at another time. But the point is being made that not all communications by citizens, among whom are our journalists, are, at law, subject to an absolute protection on the basis of the constitutional right to privacy.

But while governments are among the best resourced to execute such incursions into private communications, they are not the only ones. Both sophisticated international networks and petty cyber criminals are now known to be among the more prolific users of surveillance hardware and software in order to commit crimes including identity theft, cloning and other forms of fraud that are now known to contribute toward the commission of other crimes such as terrorism, the trade in narcotics and human trafficking.

Enter now the journalist. Not necessarily Greenwald with thousands of classified files courtesy Snowden, but perhaps an investigative journalist with the Jamaica Gleaner or Observer or Kaieteur News in Guyana or the Trinidad Guardian in possession of information that has the potential to shed light on the wrong-doing of public officials and thus help bring an end to corruption and other official malpractice.

Several challenges arise. For one, there is the question of protection of the source or sources of such information. There is no whistle-blowing legislation to protect people who wish to blow the cover on corporate or state malpractice, fraud and other wrong-doing in Caribbean Community countries with the exception of Jamaica with its Protected Disclosures Act which, of course, has to contend with the Official Secrets Act and its implications for disclosures related to information held by the state.

We have also witnessed a variety of legislative measures to address what our governments consider to be an exponential increase in criminal breaches online. It is understandable that the need to meet such a challenge through regulation is being treated as a matter requiring urgent attention, but there has so far been a tendency to legitimise official over-reach.

For example, Trinidad and Tobago’s longstanding attempt to introduce cyber-crimes legislation has been jeopardised by a fact common to other jurisdictions where new offences are being created in broad, uninformed terms that have the potential to capture otherwise innocuous online activities.

According to one analysis conducted by the Centre for Law and Democracy at the request of the ACM, there has also been a tendency to shift the onus unto users “to provide legal justification for activities which are only potentially harmful, instead of defining what is prohibited narrowly so as to capture only harmful activity.”

Much like the country’s Data Protection Act, a proposed cyber-crimes law in Trinidad and Tobago will have the impact of criminalising the otherwise innocent receipt of computer data by third parties, including journalists.

Similar challenges were experienced with respect to Grenada’s Electronic Crimes Act which essentially created an offence of “offensive” speech regardless of factual accuracy. The ACM joined with other organisations in condemning the law and arguing that the law could have had the effect of imposing a roadblock on information of public interest.

We have also argued that a public security justification for such laws ought to be precise and specific.

This might appear to be off the subject under discussion at this time, but it has a direct bearing on the ability of the authorities to legitimise incursions into both personal and corporate data sources. The threats to privacy and the integrity of journalistic data are thus, in this respect, subject to both open and surreptitious actions by the state.

So that, more or less, is the prevailing legislative environment and some trends in several countries. Some interception of private communication is permissible by the state under the law. Only in Jamaica is there a protection if the intercepted communication meets the standards set by the Protected Disclosures Act and the Official Secrets Act respectively.

The challenge now is how we operate within these parameters.

The irony is that the very technology that has become so useful to reporters in capturing and sifting information through digital means and has revolutionised the work of the investigative journalist, is what forms the basis for the development of surveillance software and other processes that provide access to the private information of media practitioners.

It is suggested that the rapid growth in the sophistication of such technologies owes much to a growing demand by governments to become more and more intrusive, often in pursuit of criminals but sometimes as part of an effort to gather information on the activities of political opponents and unfriendly states.

It has now become increasingly important for journalists and their news organisations to become more aware of the need to protect data and information and, very importantly, to protect their sources of news and information. Media development agencies are thus now working doubly hard to ensure that news organisations are equipped to counter an increasingly intense assault on the privacy of data and information received and stored by journalists and their organisations.

Awareness of this has in many instances impacted on the manner in which news sources now interact with journalists. In the case of Trinidad and Tobago, the 2010 disclosures led at least momentarily to a much greater degree of reticence by journalists and their sources when it came to the sharing of information. Freedom of the press was, in essence, under attack not through guns or official oppression but by the intangible tentacles of intrusive technology.

The challenge has also emerged at a time when newsroom operations in most of our territories in the region are beginning to shrink with declining investments in areas not deemed to be of urgent concern. There is virtually no investment in anti-surveillance software and few efforts made to promote greater awareness among our journalists of the need to address the increasingly prying eyes and ears of the state and also of criminal elements.

This leaves a heavy onus on individual journalists to ensure the integrity of the information they receive and disseminate is protected. This ought to be supplemented by media outfits ensuring that all technical requirements are in place once such information reaches their networks. This can include protected file storage resources and other technical back-stopping.

It would also be important for journalists and other newsroom operatives to acquire an understanding of what is required in the conduct of threat assessments and the use of encryption tools. Some training will be necessary and there are several possible low-cost online options.

There are also several basic precautions that can be taken with respect to the two main communications instruments: your mobile phone and your computer – these days invariably a laptop or tablet. In a newsroom environment, there is likely to be a networked desktop computer.

Let’s first deal with your hand-held device. It is now widely acknowledged that your mobile phone is a virtual tracking device. People who want to know where to find you can do so through the use of simple apps and by simply using your mobile number. In countries where some journalists are at risk, they develop the habit of switching SIM cards to make it more difficult to be tracked and monitored.

Additionally, you need to bear in mind that with the tendency to store a variety of information including contacts, appointments, photographs and documents, you would need to ensure that your handheld device is secure in the event it is stolen or left carelessly around.

Then there is the web browser you use to access sites that might be of interest to you when researching your story or checking the balance on your bank account or making that airline booking or checking email if you do not use a separate app – activities that require disclosure of information that should remain private.

The fact of the matter is that whether you like it or not, your browsing history always leaves a digital trail, whether you have cleared your cache and browsing history or not. That “incognito” function on your Chrome browser might offer you a level of privacy with respect to casual users of your machine at the office, but does not erase data saved in the browser and your Internet Service Provider can still record all of your activities on the computer.

A growing number of journalists now use Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) which provide a high level of protection for personal information including your IP address, data exchange and browsing history by using an encrypted connection to the Internet.

You can also use a Tor browser which uses a network of proxy services to beat tracking of your browsing habits and reduce the ability of hackers to get hold of data exchanged via the Internet. Even well-resourced government surveillance agencies have reported difficulty with tracking data on clunky Tor networks that move slowly but work well to mask your online footprint.

Its effectiveness has however made it a prime tool for use by criminals of all shades and it is truly a double-edged sword.

Now, let’s deal with your webmail services. I once attended a digital safety workshop in Austin, Texas put on by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. Well after registering for the workshop and sharing my Yahoo email address, the first presenter began by saying that using Yahoo mail is tantamount to leaving your car with the windows down and the engine running while you went away.

So, some of us switched to Gmail. Which is all well and good. It is recognised as being more secure than Yahoo mail and it works well. However, Gmail has now morphed into an integral part of the entire world of Google and your Google account. Outlook mail is considered relatively secure, except that as recently as last month, security experts picked up a vulnerability which leaves it as less than completely secure.

Increasingly, as well, journalists are using cloud file storage services not only as backup but as a primary platform for storing files. Apple, Google, Microsoft and Dropbox are among the most popular services. For the most part, these are generally secure services which encrypt your data while at rest. If you are concerned about the infamous iCloud hacks of last year, it was subsequently explained that the celebrities involved had been the victims of a concerted phishing attack through which hackers were able to secure log-in information.

There are also secure apps for instant messaging and for making voice and audio calls.

The brutal fact is that the best way to secure your data is not to use phones, tablets and computers at all. The bad guys, including snooping authorities, are at work morning, noon and night working on ways to find out more about you, for security, commercial and malicious reasons.

Journalists are particularly vulnerable not only as individuals, but as important links between sources of information and the audiences we serve. In the Caribbean, sufficient attention is not being paid to assessing the risks and taking action to mitigate their possible effects.

I would not prescribe a descent into systemic paranoia to which so many have already fallen prey, but would propose far greater caution than we have displayed within recent times.

Something Called Press Freedom

Accurately determining a country’s press freedom status has always been a difficult task. International human rights groups sometimes quibble over the precise metrics and there have been known to be interesting anomalies, particularly with respect to traditionally under-reported countries such as those of the Caribbean.

The Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM) has, since its inception, attempted to present a consistent, albeit nuanced picture of the press freedom environment through our biennial country reports prepared by national associations and focal points. These are often over-shadowed in the public space by the better known assessments of international organisations such as Reporters without Borders (RWB), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Freedom House which publish annual press freedom indices.

In times past, such reports were often prepared in the absence of meaningful consultations with practitioners on the ground and against the backdrop of a generally moribund trans-Caribbean human rights movement. Apart from a small number of special interest groups that do fine work in the areas of LGBT advocacy, gender equity, workers’ rights and environmental rights, there are few that appear to have the faintest interest in one of the fundamental pillars of the democratic process – freedom of expression.

This unpardonable vacuum has created conditions under which advocates in one category of rights – whether civil and political or economic, social and cultural – do not feel inclined to draw the connection between their individual causes and the need to foster an environment of free expression. As a consequence, free expression and press freedom advocates in the Caribbean often embark upon the lonely task of bringing to light the value of such freedoms to the polity as a whole.

It is by no means a politically neutral engagement. Press freedom is subject to fickle support. Opposition politicians focus on the inalienability of the right, but quickly remind us all of the need to be “responsible” whenever the political tables turn.

The fact of the matter, of course, is that freedom does carry with it a requirement to be responsible. But it is equally difficult to be responsible if one is not free.

If you have a situation in which accountability and transparency are not the norm, access to information laws are defective and whistle-blowers are punished instead of being protected, then journalists are drawn to the “leak” and the unofficial release of information often attached to less than honourable motives. Yet, our societies crave the truth and there is usually an outcry for more and more “investigative journalism.”

It is a campaign riddled with no shortage of duplicity. Many politicians, captains of industry, opinion-leaders and others in responsible positions may not survive properly conducted investigative journalism. In a sense, in our small authoritarian geographic spaces, nobody really wants this. It is sheer hypocrisy.

So this, to me, would be one of the important metrics to measure the degree of press freedom that prevails – a predisposition to speaking the truth not only to rulers, but also to the ruled.

The other variable, of course, would be the legislative and constitutional framework under which the society functions. It is clearly not enough for there to be a constitutional provision for freedom of the press, if social and cultural antecedents militate against the freedom to offend, to blaspheme, to defy sacred edict, to stand up against the powerful and, sometimes, to get it wrong without the guillotine of silence being gratuitously imposed.

For this reason, the first signs of a country serious about free expression and freedom of the press would include a commitment to decriminalise breaches of laws related to expression, protect those who blow the whistle on official wrong-doing and the opening of the doors and windows to officially-held information through real access to information laws.

In this regard, nothing heard across the political divide in most of our countries in the Caribbean is particularly encouraging.

All of this does not mean there is no freedom of the press in the region, but that in defining the processes we need to take us there, the legislative and cultural defaults have to increasingly focus on freedom and not, as is currently the case, on restriction and ultimate silence.

Press Freedom Advocacy in the Caribbean - the plight of the volunteer

In the English-speaking Caribbean, press freedom advocacy is left almost entirely up to voluntary organisations and individuals earning their incomes mainly as working journalists or, depending on the circumstances, is left to media owners and managers responding to a variety of general regulatory requirements and specific threats to their individual media enterprises.

During the course of the Grenada Revolution of 1979-1983, oppressive media conditions in that country stimulated action by a cross-section of regional publishers led by Ken Gordon of the Trinidad Express with important support from newspapers in Guyana, Barbados and Jamaica. Except for regional responses to the state advertising boycott of Stabroek News in Guyana of 2007-2008, there has not, in recent years, been a similar instance of significant, concerted regional solidarity by newspaper publishers for each other.

There is, as well, no serious culture of human rights advocacy which positions freedom of expression as central to either civil political rights or as a pillar of economic, social and cultural rights. In fact, with few exceptions in Jamaica and Guyana, there can be said to be no functioning human rights organisation that has withstood the test of political incumbency.

The Bar associations of the region, together with the legal fraternity they represent, have failed the people of the Caribbean badly through their lack of active interest in this area of human rights.

In Trinidad and Tobago, the T&T Publishers and Broadcasters Association (TTPBA) has flown a generally consistent press freedom flag, together with the Media Association of Jamaica (MAJ) which has provided a sound platform for media solidarity in the face of industry-specific threats. But, apart from a floundering politically-volatile experiment in Guyana, through a Media Proprietors Association (GMPA), there do not exist concerted and cohesive efforts by the media fraternity to address press freedom challenges when they arise elsewhere.

The Curacao Media Organisation (CMO) which was recently admitted as a member of the Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM) appears to be a hybrid association comprising both media managers and working journalists.

For the most part, the ACM has been the region’s premier press freedom advocacy group with critical support from its network of almost entirely voluntary organisations, some of which occasionally sink and emerge from significant organisational challenges.

There are current ACM-mediated “rescue” efforts in Antigua and Barbuda with respect to the Antigua and Barbuda Media Congress (ABMC) and the Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago (MATT) while the Barbados Association of Journalists (BAJ) is yet to hold a long overdue general meeting and the Sint Maarten Media Association which had a promising start under Marvin Hokstam is now defunct.

The volunteeristic nature of all of these organisations can be said to be among their sternest challenges. Because both their leaders and members tend to be busy journalists and other media workers, little attention is paid, or is possible, to attend to the second most important element of the game which is the availability of money to keep things going organisationally.

In Latin America, still in recovery from the dictatorships of the relatively recent past, and with a much shorter history of democratic governance than the English-speaking Caribbean, organisations that pay attention to freedom of expression and press freedom tend to be full-time professional outfits funded by development-support and human rights institutions primarily from the developed world.

In the Caribbean, such international agencies, trusts and foundations have not recognised how possible it is to have long traditions of peaceful democratic life while at the same time confront serious attacks on the ability of the press to function in an unfettered manner.

There is the added difficulty of many international organisations not recognising the vital distinction to be made between the countries constituting the geographical area of Latin America and the Caribbean.

In fact, there are United Nations agencies that do not make the distinction and are quite happy to report on the state of affairs of “Latin America” as a region without reference to the Caribbean, notwithstanding official mandates to disaggregate the two distinct sub-regions. I can say a lot about this particular feature of some international inter-governmental institutions but won’t provide such a distraction at this stage.

It seems to me that the challenge of volunteerism in press freedom advocacy is how to combine the best features of working journalists intervening on their own behalf while maintaining a sustainable, professional environment to facilitate expression of their concerns.

This perhaps requires a re-thinking of current approaches to include some elements of the following:

1. That Caribbean media workers associations consider formal, legal incorporation as entities with the ability to conduct research projects, training programmes, fund-raisers and campaigns that earn them an income to meet recurrent expenditures on staff and secretariat space. This, of course, carries with it the burden of corporate obligations to prepare financial and management statements, pay taxes and take care of staff needs;

2. That the state and corporate sectors be encouraged to establish independent philanthropic trusts from which funding from such enterprises can be derived for institutional support of media associations. The funding mechanism developed for independent support for the Caribbean Court of Justice is a fine example of how this can be achieved;

3. That media enterprises consider seconding full-time journalistic staff over limited periods to serve on a full-time basis with media associations. This can be a meaningful contribution on the part of media owner and manager organisations in an area in which there is mutual interest together with media worker organisations;

4. That trade unions active in the media sector play a role in lending operational support to national media worker associations;

5. That the constitutions of national associations re-consider the trend toward longer terms of office for elected officials. The recent trend has been toward extending terms to a period of two years. It might be that such a term is too long and that executive committees require more frequent refreshing;

6. The issue of entitlement to membership should be debated to determine the degree to which new media and other entrants to the industry can be embraced;

7. That national media associations play a role in developing national level frameworks for media self-regulation;

8. That, in some instances, where the national media landscape is small and limited, consideration be given to merging the operational and institutional arrangements for representing both media enterprises and media workers;

There is little doubt that the ACM, as the umbrella organisation and international interface for the Caribbean media worker fraternity also faces similar challenges of its own. But many challenges are associated with the fact that too many national affiliates are dysfunctional, poorly funded entities driven by a few devoted volunteers.

Opponents of the free press are wont to gloat on such a parlous state of affairs. So too do uninterested media workers who have proven to be their own worst enemies.

National media worker organisations are absolute necessities in today’s world. Those that continue to function well against all odds are to be applauded. Those that falter and fall need much broader and urgent support.

Media, Terror and the Right to be Responsible

Australia’s recent brush with mindless violence ended in the deaths of two hostages and a lone gunman believed to have been acting essentially on his own but bearing the borrowed trademark of international terror.

Among the more remarkable features of the hostage-taking drama was the role the broadcast media played in reducing the channels of public information available to Man Haron Monis who, as part of his plan, had intended to employ a mass media platform to air whatever his terrorist agenda might have been.

There was some speculation, early in the day, that Monis might have first had his eyes on an attack on the Channel 7 premises virtually across the street from the Lindt Chocolate Café where the 17-hour crisis unfolded.

It appeared that once state security established it was basically a one-man operation, the plan was to both isolate and frustrate him by wearing him down physically and limiting access of his messages to the public – in essence to stifle the primary benefit of such an effort by denying him the oxygen of a media platform.

Without armed backup he would have had to remain fully awake and alert throughout the episode, grown weary and more likely to drop his guard … which he eventually did.

It has now been reported that Monis had in fact demanded that his hostages record video and audio messages for dissemination to the media. Some of the material made it to the relatively un-moderated social media where much of it was eventually taken down.

But, for the most part, the Australian broadcast media resisted the rather compelling temptation to air what would have been some pretty spectacular material. There are reports that the police asked for the material not to be broadcast, but there is also evidence that the media themselves understood the value of not providing the hostage-taker with a channel to disseminate his several messages, among them a demand to have a live on-air discussion with Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

The actions of the mainstream media, it is now being acknowledged, contributed to the success of the security exercise.

Much of this is reminiscent of developments in Trinidad and Tobago during the course of a five-day hostage crisis in 1990 at two locations. During the standoff, 114 members of the Jamaat al Muslimeen, supported by collaborators outside of the parliament and state television facilities, attempted to violently wrest control of the government from the then National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) administration.

Some features of the modus operandi of the two events were somewhat similar; hostage-taking and access to public communication in particular. The latter characteristic is an essential component of effective acts of terror. If the militant message does not reach mass audiences, the impact of the attack is vastly minimised. This is why the public relations resources of international terrorist organisations are so abundantly-resourced. Remove this function and the lungs of the messages of terror are deactivated.

For this reason, some countries have inadvisedly overstepped accepted human rights norms and placed wholly unacceptable restrictions on press freedom via legislative edict. This is clearly not the way to proceed, but an attempt to understand the rationale should be made. I can understand why a government would want to legislate this, but it is another instance in which the media as an institution and the role they see for themselves is misunderstood.

There is a public interest concern responsible media recognise as a matter of course. There is no evidence of the use of coercion in the case of Australia neither was there outright use of official edict in Trinidad and Tobago in 1990 where, in the earlier stages, there was very little journalistic leadership in the broadcast media.

What there eventually was in both instances, to a great degree, was recognition of an overwhelming public interest role for the media. Observance of the public interest is a position media advocates employ to press for sustained freedoms, but it is also the impetus that drives a sense of responsibility, temperance and good judgment at times of crisis.

This is not official censorship, though it carries a flavour of self-censorship. But editorial judgment always carries with it the right to sift the beneficial from what is not beneficial. It is the right to be responsible.

Social media have changed the dynamic and such platforms need to remain unfettered outside of lawful constraints. But in these challenging times for all societies and for the mainstream media, introspection on such matters is an imperative.

Building a Framework for Media Self-Regulation in the Caribbean A Discussion - Wesley Gibbings

Voluntary media self-regulation is said to reside at one end of a spectrum of interventions marked at the other coordinate by official regulation and, somewhere in the middle, by a grey band of co-regulatory arrangements. The Law Commission of New Zealand in its 2011 study entitled The News Media Meets ‘New Media’ describes such options as a “pyramid” or “continuum with government intervention and sanctions increasing along the continuum, or with each layer of the pyramid.”

In few instances, in the modern era, is the option of “no regulation” contemplated except via a variety of arguments related to a presumed requirement to keep the Internet “free” both by means of more pervasive access and through a regime of official controls governing content that does not exceed accepted principles related to conventional media.

                                   

Much support for the notion of more freedom, as opposed to more official regulation, is derived from an understanding of the potential developmental impact of liberalised mass communication arrangements and recognition of the value of free expression as an asset in the strengthening of the democratic process. It is deemed axiomatic that when freedom of expression prevails greater balance is achieved between the powerful and the powerless. For example, in introducing UNESCO’s 2014 publication on World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development, Director-General, Irina Bokova noted that “a new global sustainable development agenda … must be underpinned and driven by human rights, with particular attention to freedom of expression.”

Free expression is both a vital pillar and by-product of a liberal democracy. It serves as a self-propagating instrument of social change and its protection can contribute to the building of platforms for good governance, democracy and the consequential benefits of human and social development. The media, as one formal manifestation of this freedom, can serve as interlocutors between the powerful and the powerless, with a role as independent watchdogs on the exercise of both state and private power.

Voluntary media self-regulation in this context serves as an effective shield not only against the excesses of dominant state and private holders of power but against the indulgences of errant media themselves. Sir Brian Leveson, in summing up his report on the 2012 public inquiry into issues of British press culture (the “Leveson Inquiry:”) concludes that “for many years, there have been complaints that certain parts of the press ride roughshod over others, both individuals and the public at large, without any justifiable public interest.”

Leveson went so far as to propose a form of “whistle-blowing” protection for journalists “who felt that they might be put under pressure to do things that were unethical or against the code.”

There is also the long-held view, as noted by the New Zealand study, that the law has a role to play in holding the news media accountable to the public for the exercise of their powers.

Correspondingly, there is a public interest concern when the state is accorded a disproportionate hand in addressing media transgressions. Brenton Priestly’s 2004 essay on The Australian Media: Regulation, Self-Regulation, the Public Interest and Free Speech says the argument against government regulation of the media “places the public interest at its forefront; the emphasis is on the principle that an independent media will foster free speech which will be jeopardised by concentrating too much power over it in the hands of the government.”

The Justice Hugh Small Committee which deliberated on Jamaica’s defamation law in 2007-2008 appeared to endorse such a principle. “It (Committee) considers that the State should not be involved in regulation of the media as this would be contrary to the constitutional principles of freedom of expression. The press and journalists in several Common Law countries have established their own organisations for monitoring press freedom and enforcing appropriate ethical standards for the practice of journalism.”

The development of a conceptual framework for media self-regulation in the Caribbean would benefit from a clinical examination of the performance of both existing and proposed statutorily determined content restrictions and self-imposed standards both in the case of individual institutions and at the level of the media industry as a whole. But it would also be important to ensure that whatever the prognosis, freedom of expression considerations remain integral to the charting of a way forward.

The international free expression advocacy group, Article 19, noted in its response to the Final Draft Royal Charter on Self-Regulation of the Press in the UK in 2013 that press regulation is not necessarily prohibited under international human rights standards though a specific model is nowhere prescribed.

However, the group advised that such regulation would only be acceptable if it met three basic requirements:

1. Such regulation be prescribed by law. For example, supporters of Trinidad and Tobago’s “Broadcast Code” have cited its existence as a mandatory requirement of the country’s Telecommunications Act;

2. Regulation is required in pursuit of a legitimate aim, including, inter alia, the rights of others. The European Court of Human Rights has elaborated that states have a positive obligation to regulate the exercise of freedom of expression in order to ensure the adequate protection of other rights by the law;

3. Regulation is necessary in a democratic society.

On the latter point, Article 19 was careful to note that a regulatory response to any “pressing social need” must be proportionate to the interests sought. Additionally, “if a less intrusive measure is capable of achieving the same purpose as a more restrictive one, the least restrictive measure must be applied.”

Trinidad and Tobago’s Broadcast Code appears to meet the standard set by the first requirement. However, there must be corresponding concern that there exist stark anomalies in the regulatory frameworks of the print media when compared with far greater official intrusions in the broadcast sector. The lack of parity in the regulatory frameworks governing the print and broadcast media is now also being met by overlapping concern over online content delivered on converged media platforms.

In the New Zealand study, which was commissioned to review the adequacy of the regulatory environment in news media in the “digital era”, that country’s Law Commission pointed to “significant gaps and contradictions … emerging in these parallel systems of state and self-regulation for print media and broadcasters as the channels for delivering news converge in the multi-media digital environment … There is currently a lack of regulatory parity between traditional news media and unregulated web publishers on the one hand, and broadcasters and print publishers on the other.”

A 2014 UNESCO report also speaks of “extensive unevenness within the whole (media)” both within and without media disciplines and national borders and the New Zealand Law Commission report points to “the collapse of the boundaries which have traditionally separated the print and broadcast segments of the news media. Increasingly these once discrete entities are transforming themselves into multi-media companies, capable of producing news in a rich mixture of text and audio-visual formats, disseminated on an ever expanding array of platforms and devices, and promulgated via social media.”

The Caribbean is similarly challenged to clinically examine the emerging trends that are increasingly being met by unenlightened regulatory responses. In like manner, the regional media industry needs to reflect on its own transformation in the face of convergence-dominated technological and organisational mutations.

UNESCO’s 2014 report on World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development points to technological trends that have “impacted traditional economic and organisational structures in the news media, legal and regulatory frameworks, journalism practices, and media consumption and production habits.”

Technological convergence, the Report says, has expanded the number of and access to media platforms as well as “the potential for expression.”  Such advances have “enabled the emergence of citizen journalism and spaces for independent media, while at the same time fundamentally reconfiguring journalistic practices and the business of news.”

Caribbean media would ignore this dynamic at its peril. Uneven state regulation across media sectors and a failure by the industry to come to terms with its own transformation can leave dangerous gaps in a regulatory landscape that is subject to considerable authoritarian whim not only by politicians but by populations that often perceive themselves to be under siege.

It should also be recognised that there are several existing models of media self-regulation, most of which are the subject of constant review. In France, Italy and Spain, media regulation is almost exclusively by statute. In Italy the Open Media Coalition has been lobbying heavily for a more transparent process in the selection of nominees to bodies such as the Communications Regulatory Authority.

Jamaica’s Broadcasting Commission was established by statute under the Broadcasting and Radio Re-Diffusion Amendment Act of 1986 and the appointment of commissioners is made by the Governor-General after consultation with the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.

Likewise, members of the Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago (TATT) are appointed by the President. Its principal mandate is “the orderly development of a telecommunications system that serves to safeguard, enrich and strengthen the national, social, cultural and economic well-being of the society” by “promoting and protecting the interests of the public” and “regulation of broadcasting services consistently with the constitution.”

It has been rather disingenuously argued that voluntary media self-regulation mechanisms, within the context of the existence of these state regulatory agencies, would constitute a position of media “co-regulation”. What would more closely resemble a situation of co-regulation would be the delegating of key mandates under the current enabling legislation to a self-regulatory mechanism operated by the industry under conditions similar to what obtains in Denmark and have been established under the UK’s Royal Charter on Self-Regulation of the Press which goes into effect in 2015.

While it would appear oxymoronic to describe a voluntary act as being grounded in statute, this is actually the case in Denmark and, to a lesser extent, Ireland. In Ireland, a Press Council, which oversees newspapers and not the broadcast media, is recognised in law as an institution for redress in the event of media wrongdoing but does not carry the force of law. In Denmark, on the other hand, membership of the Press Council, which is independently constituted, is mandatory with penalties prescribed at law.

The Royal Charter does not call for mandatory membership by the press but has been heavily criticised as a method of imposing state regulation through employment of an industry façade. On September 8, 2014 an Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) was launched in response.

It has however been noted that while the term "self-regulation" means that the industry or profession rather than the government is doing the regulation, it is not necessarily the case that government involvement is entirely lacking. This observation by Angela J. Campbell of the Georgetown University Law Centre, writing in the Federal Communications Law Journal in 1999, was in support of the view that a state role might not necessarily be in contradiction with the best intentions of self-regulation in application of its three main components – legislation, enforcement and adjudication.

“Instead of taking over all three components of regulation, industry may be involved in only one or two. For example, an industry may be involved at the legislation stage by developing a code of practice, while leaving enforcement to the government, or the government may establish regulations, but delegate enforcement to the private sector,” the Campbell paper says.

“Sometimes government will mandate that an industry adopt and enforce a code of self-regulation. Often times, an industry will engage in self-regulation in an attempt to stave off government regulation. Alternatively, self-regulation may be undertaken to implement or supplement legislation.”

The solution facilitated by the Royal Charter appears to support a hybrid model based on such a formulation.

Article 19 advises that while self-regulation relies first and foremost on members’ common understanding of the values and ethics that underpin their professional conduct, there is actually no uniform definition of “self-regulation”. It points to the even more problematic model of “regulated self-regulation” as obtains in Denmark and Ireland and, from 2015, in Britain.

The conundrum arises in the broadcast sector in the Caribbean which is subject to heavier direct state regulation. Trinidad and Tobago’s proposed Broadcast Code, for example, is meant to be a state administered mechanism to monitor, adjudicate and punish broadcasters who, by virtue of the Telecommunications Act and their individual broadcasting licenses, are obligated to adhere to the Code. There is nothing voluntary about the Code and industry engagement of the process arises solely out of consultations on the standards set by it.

Opposition to the Code in all its manifestations beginning with a first draft in 2005 included an argument that its provisions were likely to exceed the existing legal framework for redress in the stated areas of concern:

(1) the protection of national security;

(2) the prevention of crime and disorder;

(3) territorial integrity;

(4) public safety;

(5) the protection of health or morals; or

(6) the reputation or rights of others

Recognition of this is actually expressed in the document which states: “The design of the Code recognises that in Trinidad and Tobago, there currently exists legislation in force which provides some level of protection and remedies in all of the aforementioned areas.” Opponents of the Code, including this writer, argued that the real intention of the Code was to create space for more regulation than existed in the past by generating an entirely new range of potential transgressions not already interpreted as such by the legal system.

The Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM) opposed model Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) broadcasting legislation on similar grounds, based on the view that even as the precedent of content restrictions was well established in the Caribbean, the legislation to be adopted by the member states of the regional sub-grouping had failed to meet several key standards linked to independent operations and adjudication, fairness and proportionality regarding penalties.

Two attempts at a pan-Caribbean industry-led self-regulatory system were launched in 1976 by the now-defunct Caribbean Publishers and Broadcasters Association (CPBA) and in 2002 by the Eastern Caribbean Press Council (ECPC). The 1976 Caribbean Press Council (CPC) was established with 17 members comprising four CPBA nominees, four journalists and nine non-industry members including a chairman who was explicitly not a member of the media industry.

National councils were designed to follow the same practice of appointing non-media chairpersons. Operating with a cadre of voluntary Council members and entertaining complaints from the public with no mechanism to ensure compliance, both the CPC and its national councils eventually collapsed. Mark D. Alleyne notes in Mass Media and the Caribbean that the Barbados Press Council went defunct after 1985 after its chief user, the late Prime Minister Tom Adams, died.

The project was met with deep scepticism in Jamaica where it was thought that a press council was one way of the government getting back at what it considered to be recalcitrant journalists. There was also opposition to the supra-national jurisdiction of the CPC.

The ECPC never full got off the ground following its hopeful launch in 2002. The fledgling ACM was never invited to be a part of the discussions over its establishment and its founders focused mainly on involvement of editors and publishers to the exclusion of media workers. A lack of funding and uneven levels of interest by publishers eventually led to the demise of the ECPC.

By that time, the Trinidad and Tobago Publishers and Broadcasters Association (TTPBA) had launched a Media Complaints Council (MCC) under the chairmanship of former Senate President, Michael Williams. According to TTPBA records, the MCC came into being in 1997 after the then Government tried to have passed in Parliament the infamous Green Paper on Media. In May 1997, the government published a report entitled "Toward a Free and Responsible Media," which proposed the adoption of statutes requiring journalists to report with "due accuracy and impartiality." The so-called "green paper" also called for the creation of a code of ethics mandating that journalists promote national unity, and economic and social progress. The government plan was shelved in response to public outcry led in large measure by a number of media proprietors and MATT.

The owners and CEOs of media companies that then comprised the TTPBA saw the need to establish an independent body charged with enforcing a Code of Practice that was adopted by the media. Since that time the MCC has been funded and supported by the TTPBA.

Despite the existence of a widely-circulated Code of Practice, successive attempts at imposing new restrictions on the media have cited a lack of professional guidelines for journalists. The Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago (MATT) has long resisted adopting its own Code, thought it once endorsed guidelines formulated by the now-defunct Caribbean Association of Media Workers (CAMWORK) and is a member of the ACM which has its own Code.

The MCC Code was designed by the industry and acknowledges that adherence to it “involves a substantial element of self-restraint by the journalist” but was designed “to be acceptable in the context of the system of self-regulation.  The Code applies in the spirit as well as in the letter.”

Trinidad and Tobago continues to be the only English-speaking Caribbean country with a functioning media council. A review of its operations is currently being conducted. The Council comprises five members nominated by the TTPBA. Only one industry person sits on the Council and its chair typically comes from outside the media. A majority of media houses subscribe to the work of the Council and it is funded entirely by TTPBA member companies.

Media industry leaders in the Caribbean rarely actively engage the question of sector-wide voluntary self-regulation. The Media Association of Jamaica (MAJ), which represents the media industry, has described efforts by the Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ) to establish a Media Complaints Council as “irrelevant” saying “self-regulation would be sufficient and even more binding if media houses integrated their respective Codes of Conduct into journalists’ employment contracts.”

In the view of the MAJ, “the best regulation for press freedom is self-regulation. The proposed revised laws, added to existing broadcasting regulations and the existence of individual media codes of conduct and ethics provide a mix of legal, regulatory and self-regulatory oversight of the media which is crucial for an independent media and for a healthy democracy.”

This position suggests that a system of voluntary self-regulation can suffice on state regulation and individual company codes tied to the work contracts of journalists. The absence of industry engagement in the formulation of an industry-wide initiative would render the PAJ initiative futile.

With Leveson’s “whistle-blowing” capabilities for journalists in mind, perhaps MAJ member companies would be inclined to consider what the Inquiry suggested would be a “conscience clause” in the work contracts of journalists to protect them in the event they are instructed to commit an unethical or illegal act in the researching of stories.

The only other recently functional industry association is the Guyana Media Proprietors Association (GMPA) which had been active on the contentious issue of the award of broadcast licenses. Its members were signatories to the 2011 Code of Conduct for Reporting and Coverage of Guyana Elections which was supported by the Guyana Press Association (GPA) and the vast majority of Guyanese media houses.

Guyana’s elections Code, first tested during the elections of 2001 and, more successfully in 2006, provided the region with a unique model of media self-regulation in which an official agency, in this case the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) provided or oversaw monitoring, reporting and adjudicating functions while a wide cross-section of the media industry developed and formally adopted a Code of Conduct.

Certainly, extending the concept to broader full-scale application would have required considerably more financial and human resources, greater operational autonomy from official agencies and a much more rigorous process of adjudicating apparent breaches of a more extensive Code. There would also need to be a nuanced discussion on where official regulation ends and where self-administered standards take over and how the two poles relate to each other.

These two country-specific cases draw attention to the need for national discourses on the essential value of a free press. It is true that state regulation of the press and other forms of public expression are well-entrenched features of Caribbean culture. In media practice, there are acceptable statutory restrictions related to the protection of minors, privacy and defamation. In recent years, issues of state security and the conduct of international criminal activity have been firmly planted as part of the media’s regulatory landscape.

In few instances, however, has there been a reciprocal drive to legislate greater access to official information, to cite one example. Only five of the Caribbean Community’s 15 member countries have access to information laws. There has also been recurring reference to state regulatory capabilities when it comes to online content. Both the OECS broadcast legislation and the Broadcast Code of Trinidad and Tobago at some stage proposed regulatory incursions into the production of online content.

The prevailing environment nevertheless requires formulation of a self-regulatory agenda which promotes the concept of high journalistic standards and protection of the rights of citizens. Leveson’s often misunderstood prescription speaks of a body to set standards, both through application of a Code and in relation to governance and compliance.

Such a body, he argues, “should hear individual complaints against its members about breach of its standards and order appropriate redress while encouraging individual newspapers to embrace a more rigorous process for dealing with complaints internally; take an active role in promoting high standards, including having the power to investigate serious or systemic breaches and impose appropriate sanctions; and provide a fair, quick and inexpensive arbitration service to deal with any civil law claims based upon its members’ publications.”

Chairman of the UK Press Standards Board of Finance, Lord Black of Brentwood, in his special submission to the Leveson Inquiry, proposed a new self-regulatory body to replace the beleaguered Press Complaints Council (PCC) under an independent Trust Board with subscriber media houses engaged in contractual relationships with the regulator.

It would involve a complaints handling role for the regulator while placing it alongside the creation of a separate arm of the regulator with powers to investigate serious or systemic failures and levy proportionate fines where appropriate. The system would also require the establishment of a new industry funding body to set and collect membership fees, which would have a role in the appointment process for the Chair of the body, discretion over who can join the body and responsibility for the Editors’ Code.

In the Caribbean, the arms-length relationship between the industry and state regulators may vary. Lord Black’s proposal for a contractual arrangement between the independent industry regulator and member media houses might be something to consider. There is also merit in empowering a separate arm of the regulatory body to impose financial penalties based on contracts and not necessarily on statute.

It is not however likely to be acceptable to Caribbean media enterprises that, as suggested in the Leveson report and reflected in the Royal Charter, industry representatives should comprise a minority in the adjudicating arms of self-regulatory councils, notwithstanding the fact that the CPC, ECPC and more recently the MCC in Trinidad and Tobago employed such a model if only to foster greater confidence in the independent deliberations of a press or media council.

It would also make sense for a system of appeals to reside, much like the Caribbean Court of Justice, in a supra-national regional body along lines proposed under the CPC with the exception that the appeals mechanism comprise a majority of industry experts.

National press councils, as originally proposed by Lord Black, should also operate on terms of reference in excess of a complaints mechanism but be actively engaged in address what can be systemic shortcomings in media practice.

The question of who pays the bills would necessarily arise. This would depend on where the particular model resides along the spectrum of state and industry regulatory conditions. It might be that partial state funding can accompany a notion of media co-regulation in instances where the media industry is invited to determine the parameters of new rules and guidelines for enforcement by a state regulatory body, such as was proposed by the telecommunications body in Trinidad and Tobago.

The 2014 UNESCO report on World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development also recognises the intractable challenge of self-censorship and the growing trend toward what it describes as “private sector censorship.” Such a scenario would appear to assist in the prescribing of state-managed regulation to override what is also described by the report as “the privatisation of censorship.”

An appropriate Caribbean Framework for Media Self-Regulation should include a deliberate and discrete method for addressing such a concern. This is particularly so in the face of the increasing importance of technology companies and “other intermediaries in the media ecosystem.”

Additionally, growing concern about social and economic decline in the Caribbean is likely to stimulate more, rather than fewer, coercive responses. Already the tide of public opinion has turned in favour of more draconian laws and punishments in the context of rising violent crime, corruption and political malpractice.

The Caribbean media industry can lead the way in finding a solution to its shortcomings in a manner that respects the value of free expression and the ability of citizens to benefit from the free flow of information, news, opinions of all shades, analyses and entertainment.

Andrew Puddephatt’s 2011 treatise on The Importance of Self-Regulation of the Media in upholding freedom of expression suggests that there are two overarching principles if it is to be accepted that self-regulation is the necessary alternative to state control of the media.

“Firstly all media actors, professional or business have obligations to uphold in exchange for the freedom of state interference that they rightly claim. These obligations should be centred on the need to protect and promote freedom of expression. Secondly, all such obligations should be made explicit and transparent and be the subject of regular reporting in the public sphere. Both conditions are essential if self-regulation is to protect freedom of expression and not just the interests of companies themselves.”

The Caribbean context to all of this is a state of intense flux.  Established mainstream media have contended over recent years with a rapid rise in non-traditional news-gatherers entitled to enjoyment of freedom of expression without prejudice but are often operated by people who do not necessarily feel compelled to honour professional journalistic and other media standards.

An exercise similar to the New Zealand study would hopefully provide clues into the precise nature of this sub-sector’s engagement of the notion of voluntary self-regulation. The growing importance of social media and pervasive nature of other virtual, multimedia platforms is measured in terms of drop-offs in newspaper purchases, declining broadcast audiences in some instances and a growing reliance on the immediacy of digitally delivered news and information at the expense of traditional media.

The setting, monitoring and evaluation of standards related to such content may well remain elusive for some time to come. It might well be that, for now, the focus will continue to remain on ensuring that the operations of and content produced by mainstream, traditional media with digital overflows adhere to high professional standards and strengthen the case for the retreat of the state regulator.

Wesley Gibbings

Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers

October 8, 2014

REFERENCES/ADDITIONAL READING

The News Media Meets ‘New Media’: Rights, Responsibilities and Regulation in the Digital Age, Law Commission of New Zealand, 2010

World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media, UNESCO, 2014

Report into the culture, practices and ethics of the press, The Leveson Inquiry, UK 2012

The Australian Media: Regulation, Self-Regulation, the Public Interest and Free Speech, Brenton Priestly, 2004

Review of Jamaica’s Defamation Laws, Justice Hugh Small Committee, February 2008

Royal Charter on Self-Regulation of the Press, UK, 2013

Draft Broadcast Code, Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago, 2013

Broadcasting and Radio Re-Diffusion Amendment Act of 1986, Jamaica

Self-Regulation and the Media, Angela J. Campbell, Georgetown University Law Center, 1999

The Importance of Self-Regulation of the Media in upholding freedom of expression

Andrew Puddephatt, UNESCO, 2011

News Media (Self‑regulation) Bill, Australia, 2013

IPSO Editors' Code of Practice, UK, 2014

Media Complains Council of Trinidad and Tobago, Code of Practice, Trinidad and Tobago Publishers and Broadcasters Association, 1997

A More Accountable Press Part 1: The Need for Reform. Is self-regulation failing the press and the public? UK, Media Standards Trust, 2009

Mass Media and the Caribbean edited by Stuart H. Surlin, Walter C. Soderlund, Routledge, 1991

Third World Mass Media and Their Search for Modernity: The Case of Commonwealth Caribbean, 1717-1976, John A. Lent, Bucknell University Press, 1977

Why Media Self-Regulation in Guyana, Georgetown, Guyana – September 11, 2009, Wesley Gibbings