The Government Information Agency GINA) in a release yesterday decried what it called Stabroek News’s “lobbying efforts” directed at a number of organizations and agencies in an attempt to “garner sympathetic ears” over government’s decision to withdraw ministry advertisements from the newspaper. The agency accused the Stabroek News of setting out “to stack as high as it possibly could, increased criticisms of the Administration.”
While the statement repeated earlier government positions on the issue, it enlarged on the matter of official policy which was “to place its advertisements in two dailies.” As such, GINA said, “the two chosen Newspapers are the State Paper – the Guyana Chronicle – and one private newspaper, in this case the Kaieteur News, since that Newspaper has proven itself to be the most widely read and far-reaching newspaper in the country.”
The release went on to say that like every other government agency GINA was “bound by fiscal regulations and therefore was obligated to garner maximum returns from the tax-paying dollars.”
In response to the claim that GINA was ensuring “maximum returns” on tax-payers’ dollars in a situation where the policy was to give only two dailies ads, Sunday Editor Anna Benjamin said that if the principle of value for money were to be applied, then by no stretch of the imagination should the agency be placing advertisements in the state paper, which was widely perceived to have a very low circulation. The decision to put ads in the Chronicle while withdrawing them from Stabroek News simply could not in all seriousness be promoted as having a business foundation, she said.
In our edition yesterday Stabroek News Editor-in-Chief David de Caires was reported as proposing that a member of the Audit Bureau of Circulation be invited from a neighbouring territory to professionally audit the circulation of the three newspapers, including their Sunday editions. He said that the circulation of the Stabroek News was audited each month and could be published at any time, whereas the circulation of the other two dailies to the best of his knowledge had never been professionally audited. A print figure, he explained, was quite different to a paid circulation after returns had been taken into account.
De Caires was also reported as saying that he was convinced that Dr Prem Misir, the head of GINA, which controlled the allocation of ministry advertisements had made no scientific evaluation of any kind, had no idea of the paid circulation of the three newspapers and had conducted no survey of the response to advertisements. In that regard he proposed that an independent advertising agency from the region could be retained to carry out a suitable survey. The withdrawal of ads was nothing but a “naked political decision,” he said.
