– call for information ministers to meet periodically
The just-concluded Caribbean Media and Communications Conference (CMCC) has endorsed the UN Special Rapporteur’s citing of the four-month ban on CNS Channel Six as a disproportionate sanction.
UN Special Rapporteur Ambeyi Ligabo, referring to the Channel Six case, said the more subtle censorship tactics “severely restrict the independence of the press while seemingly allowing states to maintain a façade of respect to democratic principles.”
Noting that governments have used advertisements, licences and legislation to exert economic pressures on media houses, Ligabo said the impact of these measures were not restricted to the media outlets or journalists targeted but “serve to create an unsafe and unstable environment for the functioning of the press as a whole, leading them to shun critical reporting and impose self-censorship.”
The issue of the four-month ban on the television station for “infringing the terms of its licence” was denounced by a number of CMCC participants, who represented a wide cross-section of the media in the Caribbean. They included trainers and training institutions such as the University of Guyana, Carimac, the Guyana Press Association, Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM), Caricom Secretariat and UNESCO.
The government, though invited to the conference, was not represented even though the state-owned NCN provided television coverage. In fact, the government held its first ever media conference while the CMCC was in session.
In addition, the three-day conference held to mark World Press Freedom Day observed yesterday, called for Caricom ministers of information to meet periodically to discuss issues pertinent to the media in the light of the number of issues affecting developments in the communication and information sectors and which would have a direct bearing on governance.
Several recommendations were made at the various workshops which looked at strategies to strengthen freedom of the press in the Caribbean; the role of the state in a market-driven media environment;, ensuring that the regulatory framework facilitates growth and development of the communication sector; strategies for using freedom of information laws, news reporting and citizen empowerment; opportunities for more effective use of communication technologies in journalism and media production; and improving journalistic standards and professional practice.
Meanwhile, ACM Presi-dent Wesley Gibbings, in an overview of developments affecting freedom of expression in the Caribbean over the past year, noted that the media in the region have had to cite both the Inter-American Declaration and Article 7 of the Declaration of Chapultepec in representations to the Guyana government over the withdrawal of advertising from the Stabroek News. The withdrawal has since been reversed.
Reference was also made to the two instruments, when the government of the Cayman Islands withdrew state advertising from the Cayman Net News newspaper. The declaration of Chapultepec notes that “The exercise of power and the use of public funds by the state, the granting of customs duty privileges, the arbitrary and discriminatory placement of official advertising and government loans; the concession of radio and television broadcast frequencies, among others, with the intent to put pressure on and punish or reward and provide privileges to social communicators and communications media because of the opinions they express threaten freedom of expression, and must be explicitly prohibited by law.”
Gibbings noted the need to maintain “a watchful eye on how our governments have responded to real and perceived abuses of the press.”
He said that last month, in Bermuda – an associate member of Caricom but not covered by the ACM – the government announced a cutback in state advertising in the print media and terminated its subscriptions of newspapers meant for government offices and departments.
The Royal Gazette, the island’s only daily newspaper, has protested these acts claiming they were in response to the media house’s independent editorial line. “Our position is that the withdrawal of state advertising has been widely recognised by governments all over the world as a method of punishing media houses for behaviour viewed as being recalcitrant or not in keeping with their political agendas,” Gibbings said.
The closure of CNS Channel 6 for a period of four months, Gibbings said has brought the ACM “in painful contact with the notion of observing what the law says, and the degree to which a lawful remedy can be of questionable validity, legitimacy and appropriateness.”
He said that in Suriname, a defamation suit brought against a journalist from De West newspaper led to a judicial injunction that a correction appear in all national newspapers. This was contested by the non-liable media houses as being in contravention of their right to print, or not to print any subject matter.
In St Maarten, draft regulation proposing the establishment of a Media Council for the Windward Islands – St Maarten, Saba and Statia – was being debated in the context of a broader media law, which imposes a new, more rigid regime of official censorship.
In the Caribbean, Gibbings said “it would be a mistake to believe we are facing the single bullet of official action. The ballistic profiles are of several varieties and emerge from all directions, including from within.”
In this regard, Gibbings said, the free movement of media workers in the region, under the umbrella of the Caricom Single Market and Economy was “not only being stymied by lethargic official progress, but in some instances by xenophobic responses from within the media industry itself.
Only recently, we felt compelled to write one media enterprise in Trinidad that had turned an entirely blind eye to acts of victimisation and discrimination against a Guyanese journalist by some of her own newsroom colleagues.”
Feedback from media professionals over the past six years, Gibbings said, has informed the ACM’s response in supporting higher journalistic standards through hosting and co-hosting issue-specific training on health reporting, human rights, food production, climate change and basic journalism for young Caribbean journalists.
The training includes the production of the Caribbean Reporters’ Handbook on Climate Change, produced by the Caricom Climate Change Centre and the ACM, which was the first of its kind anywhere in the world, he said.
In a few weeks’ time, the ACM will begin to work on an Elections Handbook for Caribbean Journalists with help from UNESCO and other regional and international partners.
Noting that the current wave of political change in the Caribbean shows the need for improved performance in political and electoral coverage, he pointed to the work of the Independent Refereeing Panel, which was constituted to monitor adherence to a voluntary code of conduct for the media during the elections process in Guyana in 2006. He said this panel played an important role in developing a blueprint for similar action throughout the Caribbean. “Our Elections Handbook will include a case study involving the performance of the media in Guyana in 2006,” he said, adding, “we are also going to examine electoral laws in the region especially as they relate to the work of the media.”
