Government has said there is still much more to be done in terms of regulation of the local media and the way forward resides in arriving at a political consensus and it also hinted that the end of the radio monopoly may be nigh.
The comments came from Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr. Roger Luncheon who addressed the 1st Guyana Media and Communication Conference hosted by the Office of the President at the Guyana International Conference Centre, Turkeyen yesterday. It coincides with observances to mark the United Nations-designated World Press Freedom Day being observed today.
The theme of the one-day conference, attended mostly by members of the state media, was ‘Media Freedom Functioning to Empower Our People’.
Luncheon used the opportunity to signal again, government’s intention to de-monopolize radio. This has been a promise of PPP/C governments for the last 16 years but has not yet materialized. The conference is to be a yearly feature and it was against this background that Luncheon posited that by the time the next conference was held, the matter of a radio monopoly would be history. The retention of the radio monopoly has been seen by media experts as a serious blemish on the government’s press freedom record.
Luncheon who was asked to address the ‘Evolution of Press Freedom in Guyana’ said he would not give a Government of Guyana account of its observances of press freedom here, but he was impressed with the growth of the media and the levels to which society has been penetrated and the way the media have become institutionalized.
However, he acknowledged that intervention with respect to media regulation could have been made, “but bipartisan and necessary support is needed, just like in other areas where the process has been stymied.”
He said the political process was obviously the critical area within which momentum has to be developed.
According to him, there is no need to “re-invent the wheel, since indeed the prescription is there” and the only thing left was for it to be translated into action.
He said government was committed to an approach that would embrace the understanding of a wide cross section and be reflective of a consensus.
The government has excused the absence of modern broadcast laws by saying that consensus with the political opposition has been elusive. Critics have however pointed out that the government has promulgated a host of controversial laws without requiring political consensus.
With regard to media control, Luncheon told the gathering that it was not only in other areas of life, but also in the media that “he who pays the piper plays the tune.” He said this brought to the fore the issue of ownership and control as regards policy and output.
He noted that the evolution of press freedom from the 1990s onwards showed many areas where there was some comfort, but equally, a number of others where there was need for action.
He described as “an alarming deficiency” the absence of information of all types on the private media.
Former president Janet Jagan who was also a keynote speaker at yesterday’s forum touched on “notorious assaults on press freedom” during the PNC era. She asserted that “behind the ideal of freedom of the press and indeed all other freedoms lay the reality of poverty and suffering of tens of millions of human beings,” a quote from late president Cheddi Jagan’s book, The West on Trial.
Preamble
“Until the problem of ‘freedom from want’ is tackled, the other freedoms, important as they are, can have little meaning for them,” she continued.
Tracing the struggle for press freedom on Guyana, Jagan, also a co-founder of the People’s Progressive Party, said the founder of the party recognized that human rights and fundamental freedoms were all linked to national independence and the welfare of the people.
She said those who wrote the party’s preamble to its constitution had not only witnessed, but also experienced the denial of many freedoms, including press freedom.
According to her, when Dr Jagan was first elected to Parliament he had pointed out that the ‘big business’ community fully controlled the press and the radio station which was owned by four of the largest companies – Bookers, WM Fogarty, Wieting and Richter and Argosy.
This, she said, also obtained for the three daily newspapers at that time – the Guiana Graphic, the Daily Argosy and the Daily Chronicle and, more significantly the newspapers and the radio station had interlocking directorates. She said this gave a clear indication of the state of press freedom at that time.
The Mirror newspaper, she said, was established because the other papers refused to give any information on the PPP. “Not only did they totally ignore printing anything positive about the PPP, but they were first class at printing lies,” she asserted. Going back in time too, Jagan said, the Guiana Chronicle had printed wild stories about Cuban ships off the shore of British Guiana ready to invade, while at that time there were just two Cubans in the country, both diplomats.
She then interjected at this point that there was someone present in the audience who would know more about these things. She did not name anyone but appeared to be referring to someone who had been associated with the Chronicle during that period.
According to Jagan, the People’s National Congress government at the time was notorious in its assault on press freedom and did everything to prevent the Mirror newspaper from continuing its existence. “Mirror distributors were attacked and beaten off the streets, vicious libel suits were introduced, but the worse was the refusal to allow the importation of newsprint, printing material and necessary printing machinery to replace the antiquated press,” she said.
She recounted too that three well known journalists — Ricky Singh and Ric Mentis of the Guiana Graphic and Father Wong, editor of the Catholic Standard — had lost their jobs for telling the truth about the 1973 elections, which she described as the most corrupt of four rigged elections under the PNC.
The Head of the Press and Publicity Unit of the Office of the President, Dr Prem Misir chaired yesterday’s proceedings.
None of the speakers at yesterday’s opening addressed the 17-month cut-off by the Government Information Agency of state advertising in the Stabroek News. This, it had been argued by Stabroek News and others, was a serious violation of press freedom by the government and violated the press freedom Declaration of Chapultepec to which Guyana is a signatory.
The government restored advertising last month without any explanation of what caused the change.
There was also no mention during the opening addresses of the four-month suspension of the licence of CNS Channel Six which has been described as excessive by some sections of society.
Ministers Robert Persaud and Kellawan Lall also made presentations later in the day and the panellists during the working sessions were Kit Nascimento, Adam Harris, Kwame Mc Coy, Abraham Poole, Gail Teixeira, Gita Raghubir, Dr Rovin Deodat, Martin Goolsarran and Brian Young.
