In an article in yesterday’s Chronicle headlined “Abuse of press freedom – responsible reporting lacking” Dr Prem Misir stated that the Stabroek News’s limited circulation and limited reach drove the Government Information Agency (GINA) to withdraw the placement of advertisements from that newspaper. He went on to say that GINA’s policy on the placement of advertisements is as follows: “place newspaper advertisements in the state media plus one private media house.”
Responding to this statement David de Caires, Editor-in-Chief of the Stabroek News said that when it was noticed by the newspaper’s Advertising Manager, Ms Pat Cumbermack, in November last year that ministry advertisements controlled by GINA had been severely reduced and eventually cut off, calls were made by her to GINA to ascertain why this was so. She was told the matter was being dealt with by Dr Prem Misir and he should be spoken to. A large number of phone calls were placed to Dr Misir by herself and Mrs Doreen de Caires, the managing director, he never accepted any of them. Messages were left and he never responded.
It should also be mentioned that historically an important part of the functions of GINA has been to assist the media in getting important and relevant information through GINA from government ministers including the President.
All heads of GINA have cooperated fully in performing this function including Dr Misir’s predecessor Mr Robert Persaud. Editor of Stabroek News, Mr Anand Persaud has stated that he has never on any occasion been able to get Dr Misir on the telephone and a letter to him seeking information has been ignored.
On January 3, 2007 Mr de Caires wrote to Dr Misir referring to the withdrawal of ministry advertisements and stating that numerous attempts to contact him for an explanation had failed. He stated in his letter that “You are never available and you never return calls.” He said that the cessation of advertisements had resulted from a political directive from Dr Nanda Gopaul, Permanent Secretary in the Office of the President and called for an urgent review of this policy. On January 9, a response was received from Ms Karen Persaud, the coordinator of the GINA Advertising Unit in which she said: “The issues raised have been acknowledged and have now been presented to the relevant department for review.”
Mr de Caires responded to that letter stating that that response was unclear and unsatisfactory and that it must be assumed that the political directive had been withdrawn. He said that the situation would be monitored to see if there was any change.
The withdrawal of advertisements continued and the newspaper subsequently issued a press release on January 15 setting out the facts. That release was given to a senior reporter, Ms Miranda La Rose to prepare a report for the newspaper. She made eleven phone calls to Dr Nanda Gopaul and Dr Misir seeking a response. Dr Gopaul made no response and she was unable to get Dr Misir.
Eventually that evening a press release was issued by GINA stating that the basis of placement of advertisements in the media is linked to the public’s response to such advertisements. “Huge res-ponse to our advertisements emanate from Kaieteur News and Guyana Chronicle and we are constantly seeking to maximise the impact on (sic) advertisements in the interest of efficiency,” the release stated. The issue therefore had nothing to do with press freedom, it said.
Mr de Caires said that this was nothing but a rationalisation for a political directive. He said Dr Misir did not know the paid circulation of the three newspapers and had conducted no survey of any kind to determine the impact of advertisements placed in the newspapers. He said as well that throughout the world advertising agencies took into account the quality of the newspaper in addition to its circulation, especially for ads of the nature of the ministry ads which appealed to a specific target audience which the Stabroek News readership profile fitted.
De Caires said that the audited circulation figures of Stabroek News for December were immediately available and would be submitted to Dr Misir as soon as he indicates that he has the audited circulation figures for the other two newspapers. He also repeated suggestions previously made that someone from the Audit Bureau of Circulation should be invited to come to Guyana to audit the paid circulation of the three newspapers and an Advertising Agency be invited from a Caribbean territory to carry out a survey of the responses to advertisements of the kind placed by the ministry in the various newspapers from a relevant sample of readers.
In terms of ‘reach’, de Caires noted that the statistics report for the Stabroek News online website for the month of December, 2006, indicated that the average number of visitors per day for that month including Guyana were 46,507 (the average hits per day were 2,994,562).
Finally, de Caires referred to an earlier contretemps over the withdrawal of Bank of Guyana advertisements in December 1994 when Mr Asgar Ally was Minister of Finance.
On that occasion he had had occasion to point out that the target audience for those ads was more likely to be found in the readers of the Stabroek News than in the readers of the party newspaper, the Mirror, where the ads had appeared.