Free Express and AI

Though last week’s Caribbean Media Summit hosted in Jamaica by the Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC), Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM), and Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ) focused primarily on Artificial Intelligence (AI) media and journalism, ominous public policy measures loomed in the background.

In fact, while media industry standards and self-regulation were emphasised throughout as singularly effective in addressing most concerns, numerous conversations over the three days of activities drifted seamlessly into what regional governments may plan to do about the unfolding phenomenon of “Generative AI” – the occurrence of content produced by AI.

One online contributor (there were almost 200 participants on the Zoom connection and another 30-40 physically present) surmised that the region’s customary technology “lag” was on display, and I thought out loud that perhaps our delay in fully entering the process can provide some small space to consider more carefully how willing we really are to entertain regulatory arms of the state.

It would also provide time to consider human rights, including freedom of expression, as an indispensable element of the unfolding scenario.

I have long been of the view that almost everything new to enter our post-colonial space has confronted a prohibition default. Few better issues than the major revolution of artificial intelligence to instil the kind of fear required to have officialdom activate regulatory drawbridges.

It became clear as the Summit proceeded that even among liberal-minded media professionals there was a view that caution on the side of official control ought to be a preferred option.

This left precious few of us standing alone. I had mocked the admonitory notion that “non-human intervention” into public values and standards presented grave dangers and advised that such intrusions were nothing new in our context and that perhaps organised religion (relatively free, as it were, from official sanction) can be cited as being among acceptable exceptions.

Yes, this was highly mischievous on my part, but I thought that the sorcerous implications of AI being described there could have served only to invoke the kinds of feelings that make us want to arrest and jail one another … or to shut each other up. So, yes, I continue to subscribe to the view that fewer regulations on public communication produce superior results over more laws, codes, and punitive official measures.

It is also true that today’s virtual realities have rendered most forms of regulatory coercion on expression an anachronism of the highest order. If anything, sanctions unilaterally determined by the major global platforms have been far more effective at imposing regimes of censorship.

Last year, for example, my social media photograph of raw oysters was flagged under some opaque requirement to adhere to “Community Standards.” Last week, the same strange message notifying of a decision to block a post appeared when I submitted an excerpt from this newspaper column! And I knew I was not being naughty.

We customarily protest these measures citing flawed algorithms or even AI itself, but the point I am making is that to a large extent, Big Tech companies such as Meta (Facebook), Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft have outgrown most governments in influencing online behaviours – many times irrationally and wrongly so.

There is thus a vigorous, nuanced discussion on how best to rein in these global superpowers in a manner that does not compromise the right to freedom of expression of their users.

Additionally, and getting back to Mark Lyndersay’s “time lag” (yes, it was him), the slow pace of digitalisation by our countries has created a situation in which the mining of online content for purposes of AI content creation grossly under-represents our actual reality.

UNESCO’s unfolding Caribbean AI Policy Roadmap flags some of these issues but takes aim more directly at the potential developmental impact of informed, ethical usage. There are significant provisos though that point to aspirations that are current deficiencies.

These include our ability to adapt effectively to technological advances, appropriate governance mechanisms for development and use, and ensuring that the challenges of sustainable development, the climate crisis, and socio-economic inequities can be addressed.

But all of this would be a tall order in the face of deficiencies in the areas of training and education, and the urgent need to promote greater digital literacy among our populations. These shortcomings cannot be legislated into resolution. My supposedly anarchic prescription, bypassing the instinct to command and control, appears eminently feasible under the circumstances.

 

Open governance and survival

Last week, at least two major events occurred with close relevance to Caribbean development that ought to have signalled greater urgency regarding the tasks required to ensure the viability of our tiny states.

In what must be described as a hugely enlightened moment, UNESCO chose “A Press for the Planet: Journalism in the face of the Environmental Crisis” as the global theme for observance of World Press Freedom Day 2024.

The other significant occasion was the launch of a “Review of the Legislative Framework of Freedom of Information and Access to Information Legislation in the English-speaking Caribbean” by the Kingston-headquartered Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC) – which I serve as Vice President.

What was important about both events was that these two activities had been recognised (both before and during) as being mutually beneficial and co-dependent.

In summary: without recognition of the right of our populations to access information held in trust on their behalf by public agencies, there can be little progress with making the several issues of survival priority items in an informed public space.

Access to/freedom of information laws, for instance, form part of a society’s toolkit to assist it in getting to the bottom of issues affecting it. This, some of us assert, is a question of legal right and not a privilege extended by benevolent governments.

Caribbean countries that have refused to either pass such legislation or ensure that its existing form is meaningful are in breach of the kind of relationship that acknowledges such a right.

Furthermore, all our countries have signed onto a multiplicity of global commitments with explicit obligations to ensure that citizens have a legal right to access information held by public entities – albeit with a narrow selection of widely-acceptable exceptions.

I can cite several such commitments under the thematic banners of Open Government, Maximum Disclosure, and other undertakings related to satisfaction of the requirements of what is described as “the public interest.”

When the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were being negotiated, for instance, media development groups all lobbied vociferously for the assurance that public access to information should form part of this global thrust to pursue a developmental paradigm that was sustainable. Such an aspiration is now found in Target 16.10 of the SDGs.

There is also the hemispheric Escazu Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean. (As far as I am aware and from the available literature, T&T, Barbados, The Bahamas, and Suriname are not signatories to/have not ratified this.)

Among the several uses of this resource is an ability to acquaint journalists and other citizens with the information they require to make sense of public affairs. Last week we advised regional journalists that their investigations need not stop at the point where a public official says “no” to you - the norm in too many instances.

The MIC had established a regional “ATI Help Desk” to assist in taking difficult cases several steps further. But even if such a mechanism did not exist, the existence of an ATI/FOI law in Caribbean countries provides a theoretical avenue for access.

Both the UNESCO focus on “the environmental crisis” – and there are those who do not agree that we confront a profoundly serious “crisis” – and the MIC study establish key linkages between media and civil society performance and the capacity of people to intervene meaningfully in their present and future.

UNESCO expressed the challenge by declaring the concept of sustainable development “in jeopardy”, meaning that “the triple planetary crisis—climate change, biodiversity loss, and air pollution - along with their connections to public health issues, the need to strengthen democracy, to tackle dis-/misinformation on digital platforms, among other issues have become major challenges for humanity.”

I am not sure whether all of last week’s Caribbean celebrants understood the gravity of such a declaration by the world body. On the evidence, UNESCO has not engaged in alarmist hyperbole. Neither has the MIC overstated the case for greater openness in the management of officially held information.

In both instances, these ambitions confront a pervasive culture of secrecy; the right to know being a chronic omission in the practice of governance.

Take a close look at the issues occupying the news agendas of the region and tell me in which instance has the absence of open governance not been at the root of numerous current crises.

UNESCO’s admonition and the MIC work programme could not possibly have been more on target.

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Digital governance - being left behind

My riding partner, Steve, will surely assert that I am once again flogging the seemingly dead or dying horse of our country’s digital ambitions.

But I am prepared to risk insult and mockery for the sake of yet again placing on public record my belief that the current transition to things digital currently confronts emotional and institutional barriers constructed of reinforced brick and steel.

I have witnessed the techies tear both dark and greying hair from their heads over this. At a time when serious societies are mulling the positives and negatives of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) – several jumps ahead of simple digitalisation - there are local and regional bureaucracies and private sector entities stumbling over questions of first phase conversion and the application of rapidly ageing, automated solutions.

The experts consider people like me to be citizen or customer “users”, because we don’t have to master the technical and operational requirements but need at least to acknowledge some amazing leaps in our ability to conduct complex transactions using digital technology.

I have no intention of getting involved in big people business, but I am almost certain that the current unseemly fiasco involving the Minister of Finance and the Auditor General is not completely disassociated from this phenomenon of bungling unpreparedness.

I tried to follow the minister’s explanations which sought to get to the bottom of the accounting anomaly in question and it resonated in so many familiar ways when you consider the repeated admonitions published in this space.

That this explains the conundrum and paints the misapplication of an automated process as a best-case scenario is piteous, to say the least.

But that’s as far as I will go on this question.

So, let’s also have a look at what’s happening at our airports (and perhaps our seaports). I do not sense the hand of ill intent in the current state of digital underdevelopment. But there is, at minimum, aggressive hesitation with employing readily available, simple technological solutions.

Electronic Embarkation-Disembarkation (ED) cards, for example, are now standard fare in several Caribbean countries – applied in varying degrees of sophistication, of course, because they too face Luddite apprehensions.

Over here, we are still completing paper documents with information already in an efficient Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) employed by most airlines/Caribbean countries and which can be accessed by authorities here by a swipe of a barcode or passport at an immigration desk or kiosk (remember those?).

The use of these useless forms in T&T is even more ridiculous these days because you are now required to hand write in any arbitrary space (because there is no field in the current departure form) the expiry date of your passport. Refuse to do it and you aren’t going anywhere! Instead of the situation getting better, it is getting worse.

Sure. It’s not just us. I am aware of what transpires among our regional neighbours. Electronic processes are also viewed there as serious threats to authority and both high and low-level power. The use of electronic ED cards is, consequently, not always a flawless process.

Now, for the ttconnect website – this marvel of digital governance that promised a one-stop experience when accessing online government services, but which is now reduced to being a directory of links to government offices.

The cold, hard fact is that this significant portal which could have at least symbolised recognition of a new digital reality has not been working as it should for almost two years now.

Back in 2018 when the country’s ICT Plan 2018-2022 was being introduced to hopeful businesspeople, late Minister of Public Administration, Marlene McDonald was quoted as saying: “The world is changing and it is doing so much more rapidly than before, thanks to constant evolutions and innovations in the field of technology. It certainly does not serve our country’s interests if we sit idly by and allow ourselves to be left behind while the rest of the world moves on.”

Six years later, can we say we are being left behind? My pal, Steve, rather cruelly concludes that we are fading from view in the rear-view mirrors of most of the rest of the world at our level of economic development.

 

Elections and the media connection

Though the political anniversaries that signal the onset of more intense electoral activity in the Caribbean aren’t fully due until next year, the hustings appear never to have faded into the background providing gratuitous leeway for developmental agendas.

In most instances, such as ours, the campaigning never ended; together with all associated instincts for division, conflict, and a lack of cohesion.

Note, that in 2025 there can be as many as nine elections in our region, including sharp contests right here in T&T, Jamaica, Suriname, and Guyana.

There are also expected to be contests in St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Kitts and Nevis, Belize, and Anguilla. Haiti was always a doubtful starter, even when now exiled prime minister Ariel Henry promised polls next year.

We shall see how that unfolds now that a Transitional Presidential Council is in place (following some remarkable work by Caricom) and the domestic and external games to undermine the Council’s influence and relevance have already been launched.

It has been clear that the relationship between media performance and the credibility of electoral outcomes can always be assumed.

This applies everywhere else. In Sierra Leone as a Commonwealth observer last year, for instance, I was assigned specific responsibility for examining media coverage of the electoral process there, and while there are significant differences in institutional landscapes, the role of journalists remained key to how the process unfolded.

It can be said that ensuing events in that country have hinged heavily on the quality of coverage of prevailing, lingering conflict by domestic, regional, and international media.

In Haiti, at this moment, there is the real threat that the collapse of credible, independent media will serve to reinforce the already powerful influence of a hugely compromised public communication landscape.

In the process, critical concerns related to health, food security, the provision of social services, the promotion of peace, and the brittle status of marginalised groups persist outside the frame of consistent, professional media coverage. In this context, media performance can become a matter of life and death.

Last week, at a meeting of global press freedom and free expression groups in Berlin, I joined with ACM President, Harvey Panka, in asserting, among other things, the urgency of ensuring the viability of existing independent media outlets in Haiti. This is proving to be a rather tall order, as worst-case scenarios are not always easily defined.

It is not always understood that the silencing of journalists is achievable by means other than violent, deadly attack … as we all know in other necks of the Caribbean woods.

Violations of independent reporting occur both through rewards and penalties. There is a concern, for example, that state advertising can be, and has been, used in the Caribbean as a tool to achieve the objective of bringing media enterprises in line with compliant narratives. Corporate entities also employ such methods.

In the context of elections, I have been an advocate for media enterprises to agree to transparent accounting requirements when it comes to political campaign spend by political parties – much of which is absorbed by media companies.

This is not universally supported within the industry, but I believe it can form part of a best-practice model when it comes to media practice at times of elections. There is also need for a wholesome, enlightened discussion around social media.

The feelings of many practitioners and advocates on such matters form the basis for a number of interventions with which I have been associated over the years.

For example, through the Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers’ (ACM) Election Handbook for Caribbean Journalists, published in 2009 and edited by Lennox Grant and myself, there is guidance on the professional and ethical conduct of media enterprises and their journalists to assure devoted vigilance and to insulate themselves from claims of bias.

Nobody believes such an injunction meets a perfect state of affairs. Media audiences are, especially through their engagement of social media, becoming far more capable of detecting deception in the form of mis and disinformation. But not always.

There is still a lot more work to be done to meet the deliverables of media and information literacy.

Social media engine rooms run by political party operatives in T&T are already up and running and, in many cases, are easily recognisable. Their role in either ensuring or undermining the benefits of democratic practice is open for debate and discussion.

Professional journalism confronts a stern test as elections approach. Our democracy relies on its successful navigation of the challenges.

 

Getting away with murder

April 17, 2024 - Even as we collectively lament a news agenda over-laden with accounts of indescribably horrific acts of murderous violence has come information that glimmers of comforting hope at times such as these remain stubbornly absent.

Whatever the official promises and declarations, there has clearly been no progress in reversing this country’s deplorable detection rate when it comes to murder.

Shane Superville’s GML story on Sunday noted a halving of the detection rate for homicides from an already modest 16% over the first three months of 2023, to 8% between January 1 and April 1 this year.

Put another way; this year so far, there were arrests in only 11 of the 142 reported murders during the period. Now, to be fair, this does not mean to say that is the end of that, since police investigations could well have since yielded positive results with these specific cases. So maybe, in the end, the statistic will be 10% or 12%. I don't know.

The sociologists and people whose work involves looking closely at these things, both globally and parochially, must certainly, at this stage, be developing conclusions on the impact of high, chronic impunity on societies such as ours, widespread fear being among the first and most intense impacts.

Some have also pointed to the changing nature of homicides in T&T, now dominated by organised activity and what some describe as “psychotic” events. Knowing more about these things can change the manner in which modus operandi are addressed.

For instance, the incidence of organised crime is in part being addressed through anti-gang legislation with more focused and increased penalties, and changes on the question of bail.

Even so, the fact that a murderer is much more likely than not to get away with such a grievous act, has had a far more influential impact on the current situation than the fear of punishment and the judicial interpretation of harsh laws.

In my view, the knowledge that you are highly likely to be caught and promptly punished provides conditions for a far higher level of deterrence. The deterrent effect of punishments, capital punishment for murder for example, has time and again been questioned by people who know much about these things.

What is needed is for murderers to be captured, brought to trial, and punished as promptly as possible. So, this is a matter first and foremost of enlightened, highly motivated, and well-resourced policing, followed by the efficient delivery of justice, and the ameliorative effects of punishment.

Preventative interventions are a key and necessary part of the required dynamic, but there is now an immediate need to bring violators to justice. How and why things reached this stage flow as parallel, not overlapping concerns.

The role of legislators, across the political aisle, also has to be founded on greater coherence – all sides listening closely to the other. What currently obtains in T&T is far from this ideal. It has not helped that political leadership on the subject has been grossly deficient when it comes to collective deliberation and intervention.

Crime detection rates are not the stuff of political one-upmanship, especially when loss of life is involved - however critical the quality of legislative and executive leadership. The experiences of others also signal the questionable impact of vigilantism and the serious danger of extra-judicial murder – both implicit in the lobby for more guns and the return to the “good old days” when the police are said to have been prepared to skip trials and go straight for fatal punishment.

There is a role for academia here in providing clearer direction on such matters to avoid unthinking revenge becoming a dangerous substitute for justice. This is particularly important at this dark time.

But there remains no “spin” to untangle the emotions that flow from feelings of hopelessness. No political grandiloquence capable of explaining away open evidence of incapacity. No resort to magical intervention as anodyne for the failings of human effort sufficient to bring assurance and confidence.

It is also significant that nothing about this is brand new or estimated in measures of electoral terms. My personal journalistic archives in recent decades do not record a time when, as a noted trend spanning any significant period, investigative outcomes yielded anything to suggest that a durable trend of effective policing was at hand.

The current situation in fact does not signify a relapse of any kind, but the escalation of persistent decline. Getting away with murder has long been a disturbing norm.

 

Children Beyond the Legal Boundaries

There is more than one reason to feel uncomfortable and emotionally queasy about some matters discussed at last Friday’s hearing of the Joint Select Committee on Human Rights, Equality and Diversity with special focus on the question of child labour.

Numerous unpleasant memories, old and new, returned to heighten my discomfort over the framing of official positions expressed, albeit out of undeniable concern by state functionaries. Don’t get me wrong, there was nothing but good intentions on show at the hearing.

Our own front-page headline on Saturday however flagged the possibility of a ‘Crackdown on Child Beggars’ while the substantive story was titled ‘TTPS Going After Child Beggars.’

Eight years ago, a collaboration involving several institutions including the Association of Caribbean MediaWorkers (ACM), UNICEF, and the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) produced Our Children, Our Media: A Guide for Caribbean Media Practitioners.

I was part of the team, supervised by Steve Maximay, that worked on the publication whose main contributor was Barbadian journalist, Julius Gittens. It was the product of a series of regional journalism workshops and extensive research. The major thrust of the “guide” was to bring journalistic meaning and expression to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

I had by then long been influenced, as a parent and journalist, by such a mandate. In 2007, for example, in an effort led by then UNIC National Information Officer in T&T, Elizabeth Solomon (now Caricom Assistant Secretary General, Foreign and Community Relations) we looked at media coverage guided by such rights.

Literature from that event left lying around at my home one day led to an accusation by my son Mikhail (then a minor) that his parents were depriving him of the right to hold opinions of his own! Almost every single friend and associate of mine has heard that story.

Later, in 2014, I covered the ILO’s Regional Initiative: Latin America and the Caribbean Free of Child Labour which produced a ‘Brasilia Declaration’ aimed at eliminating “the worst forms of child labour” by 2016 and all forms by the year 2020.

Our then Labour Minister, Errol McLeod, described child labour as “a sin” after affixing his signature to the Declaration in the Brazilian capital.

That proceedings from that very event helped nuance the discussion when President Lula da Silva (now back in the saddle) described his early life as a child vendor and, in the process, inserted the dilemma of economic necessity versus the strict application of law.

Last Friday, Opposition Senator Jearlean John, relayed a similar message when she spoke of her childhood days in Charlotteville selling fish and vegetables and the existence of what she described as a “cultural shift.” It was a singularly important intervention.

One of the key lessons I have learned along the way (two of my close childhood friends were grossly underpaid “apprentice” mechanics at 15 and 16 earning $2.50 - $5.00 a week), was that this issue of child labour requires broad social dialogue based on an understanding of much more than what the law permits or prohibits.

Supt Claire Guy-Alleyne’s professional brief and her quoted remarks last Friday touched on this, but insufficiently to exhibit what I consider to be her sensitivity to the numerous complexities.

As a well-informed presenter at more than one regional media training exercise, it was clear that the TTPS, through Guy-Alleyne and her team, has within its community a valuable resource to add the humanitarian dynamic to application of law.

But such is the nature of policing here, it was well beyond her brief to remind the JSC and this country that observance of the rights of the child constitutes a vital element of social, cultural, and economic rights.

Under such conditions of denial, our bungling of migrant rights has imposed an additional dimension we need to negotiate with greater care.

Denial of the right of migrant children to an education over a protracted period, followed by forceful application of criminal law to address its outcome, constitutes a brutal knee to the neck.

It is also similarly injurious that after almost one decade of the Brasilia photo-op, five years after the establishment of a National Steering Committee for the Prevention and Elimination of Child Labour, and the existence of “multiple programmes”, almost nothing has happened and the absence of data is being cited in defence of gross official negligence on this matter.

People, we are not getting our priorities right!

Unfinished CCJ business

The month of April has arrived and met us all the poorer in the absence of several key people who had helped prescribe an alternative developmental pathway for us in T&T and the Caribbean Community.

For certain, moving the region from one phase to the next in pursuit of the kind of independence that breeds self-confidence and pride - based on real achievement - has proven as painful as it has been beneficial in small but meaningful steps.

Overcoming diffidence and self-loathing is a well-known challenge of the post-colonial experience – all sixty-one and a half years of it in our case. Those who dare engage the dynamics of change have, sadly, not appeared in significant numbers.

So, when last Saturday the news broke that Michael de la Bastide had died there was a futile scramble to put my hands on my copy of Within the Law, Memoirs of A Caribbean Jurist.

In it, I had borne witness not to superhuman powers and resolve, but to very human attributes upon encountering new and difficult terrain. Had I found the book, I could have filled this space with quips and anecdotes to support this contention of essential humanity.

Only three days before this had come word that Désirée Bernard of Guyana – another member of the inaugural Bench of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) had passed. This came almost three months after the death of Dutch jurist Jacob Wit who, in 2005, had sat alongside de la Bastide and Bernard and two others in the brave, new world of the CCJ.

Also among them 19 years ago this month, was late Guyana-born Caribbean jurist/legal luminary, Duke Pollard, who left us in 2022.

The important nature of the task embraced by these Caribbean icons has been captured in the numerous, fitting accolades that have reached the public space throughout the region.

It must have grieved them heavily though that the commitments of the 2001 undertaking and 2005 inauguration had dwindled to timid apprehension and cruel active and passive ambivalence. For instance, late prime minister Basdeo Panday had once lobbied forcefully to host the headquarters of the CCJ and spoke eloquently in support of its establishment.

His subsequent campaign for urgent reform of the national constitution (which is currently being considered since his passing in January) significantly omitted mention of final appellate status for the CCJ.

This is despite, even during his rigid about turn on the matter, conceding that the fear of political interference and the potential for disproportionate financial obligations, were completely unfounded given the process for the appointment of judges and the Court’s innovative funding mechanism.

Today, in 2024, some of these baseless concerns have returned to haunt us. The Caribbean legal fraternity is yet to fully ventilate these subjects in the public space – the practice of law seemingly being the stuff of cloistered virtue.

In fact, we keep hearing nonsense, even from professional advocates, about “we not in the CCJ” despite existing, mandatory compliance as a court of original jurisdiction on questions of the revised Treaty of Chaguaramas and T&T having been the subject of judgments both in favour and against single market practices by this country.

To his credit, attorney general Reginald Armour has repeatedly flagged the issue. On Saturday, on hearing of the passing of the former Chief Justice, he said: “In acknowledging his indelible contribution to the quality of this Republic’s proud development since its independence, the people of Trinidad and Tobago can now contribute to completing his dream of replacing the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice.”

Armour should now get all his colleagues to more aggressively pursue full adoption of all functions of the CCJ, especially as part of the process of reforming our constitution.

This, more than any statue or street name or fancy statement, is the least to be expected as a fitting tribute to Michael de la Bastide and the team of pioneers who helped us inch forward to complete the act of our independence. Sad that he and some of the other leading pioneers have not lived to see us get there.