(Edited excerpt from a presentation to a MATT symposium, April 12, 1996)
First of all, let us have no illusions, the problems you have with the government today are nothing new. In that country where many believe the press is most free and where indeed we have the recent examples of the press’s vigilance in Vietnam and Watergate to inspire us, President Johnson withdrew the White House credentials of reporters who upset him, protested to their employers and even had investigations instituted by the FBI. After the New York Times published excerpts from the Pentagon report President Nixon sent his assistant HR Haldeman a memo advising that until further notice no one connected to the White House should give any interview to the Times without his express permission. “I want you to enforce this without, of course, showing them this memorandum,” the note said. And President Reagan who came to power expecting a hard time for his conservative agenda from what he perceived as the hostile liberal mainstream press had a running battle with the media for eight years in which he sought to reclassify as secret and withhold increasing amounts of government information.
The newspaper with which I am associated, the Stabroek News, has had its problems with the present and the former governments in Guyana though the present government has a good record on press freedom. They have both abused us roundly and viciously from time to time, the wife of the present President even suggesting in an article in the party paper that because of what she saw as our unfounded criticisms of government policies on the border issue with Venezuela and the President’s actions we might be setting him up for a hit. But that is par for the course; there can never be a cosy relationship between government and the press if the press is doing its job. Indeed, the relationship is inherently adversarial in the nature of the case though it need not be hostile or vicious and can even be quite friendly on occasion.
Regionalism and the press
It is always good to remember too, as journalists, that there is another side to the story. Let us put ourselves for a moment in the shoes of the government, not your government, any government. No one likes criticism, it is easy unless one has a lot of experience and a fair degree of political sophistication to get rattled and become intemperate, especially if the criticism is persistent and sometimes ill-informed. And let us be honest, on some occasions governments have good grounds for annoyance due to inaccurate, sloppy or one-sided reporting. So the press is not free from blame, and we will look at this later. But there can be no concordat; because of the exigencies of production mistakes will be made and we’re not in this game to win popularity contests. So we have to fight our battles when they arise and we should fight them regionally which is why I responded immediately to Ken Gordon’s invitation to come and meet Prime Minister Panday [of Trinidad and Tobago], when the troubles with the Guardian arose, and I would like to pay tribute to the Prime Minister for his ready willingness to meet a delegation of the regional press and his courteous reception of myself and Mr Harold Hoyte of the Barbados Nation. I saw that as the best possible proof of his commitment to Caribbean regionalism and his acceptance of the fact that Caribbean publishers throughout the region have a legitimate interest in matters affecting the press in Trinidad…
The press has, of course, even wider linkages through international press associations but I would like to think that for many reasons, including a respect for the resilience of our own democracies the issue of press freedom should be discussed and dealt with regionally as far as possible.
It is my considered opinion that the Government of Trinidad and Tobago overreacted to what it apparently saw as an anti-government campaign by the Guardian. I have read the offending editorial captioned ‘Panday’s alarum’ and seen the ‘Chutney rising’ headline.
The former seemed perfectly fair comment on the Prime Minister’s alarming allegations in parliament of a plot against his government, and the latter, though somewhat capricious and capable of a negative innuendo, was at best an occasion for a measured response. Neither of them could possibly justify the government’s reaction; indeed I would like to suggest that only the most irresponsible and malicious reporting on a continuing basis could justify a government in boycotting a newspaper or refusing to deal with its reporters. It is inconceivable to me that the Guardian under Mr Jones P Madeira or Mr Alwin Chow had a private agenda to destabilise the government. We faced the same allegation in Guyana from both this and the previous government and I know how absurd this suggestion was in our case. Governments confuse robust criticism with attempts at destabilisation. We are irrevocably committed to the rule of law and constitutional government; indeed my colleagues and I fought for precisely that in Guyana for many years and I believe the Guardian and the other Caribbean papers with which I am familiar are equally so committed. As I suggested to Prime Minister Panday when we met, if the government felt it had a case against the Guardian for consistently biased reporting it should have made it publicly and in detail. When newspapers err they should be duly castigated. But virtually calling for the dismissal of Mr Madeira was unacceptable. We must on this occasion set higher standards for ourselves than those of American presidents.
Let us turn, then, to the question of ownership of the media. The picture globally is a complicated one as noted by the Report by the International Commission for the study of Communication Problems, often called the McBride report after its President Sean McBride. Published in 1980 it was commissioned by UNESCO at a time when the debate on a New International Information and Communication Order was raging. In the case of newspaper publishing this is in many cases a private, commercial operation but in some countries in Africa and Asia and until recently in countries in eastern Europe there were state-owned newspapers – indeed there is one in Guyana.
State media
And there is more widespread state ownership of radio and television stations. The many various models of ownership referred to in the report cannot be examined here. Nor can recent interesting attempts to democratise broadcasting and give communities more of an input. I have always been critical of state ownership of the media because of my experiences in Guyana where the state media when they had a monopoly became the toothless poodle of the party in power, and the news that was published or broadcast was politically tainted. Now that the state press no longer has a monopoly (state radio still has but not television) there have been improvements. But state media can never perform the watchdog role that is such a vital part of the press’s responsibilities; when the chips are down they always echo their master’s voice. I have argued that the only viable model of state ownership may be the BBC model of an autonomous but publicly owned corporation. For an interesting discussion of the topic which accepts the need for state media in Africa, but not as a monopoly see the article captioned ‘Blueprint for Freedom’ by Paul V Ansah, the director of the School of Communication Studies at the University of Ghana excerpted from a paper he read to a UNESCO conference on the press in Africa and published in the October 1991 issue of Index on Censorship.
Ownership
But of immediate concern to us today is the ownership of the media by business conglomerates. In an article by Martin A Lee, the coauthor of ‘Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in News Media’ in the December 1991 issue of Index on Censorship he argued that the failure of the US press to mount any serious opposition to censorship by the Pentagon was largely due to the fact that the news media are sponsored, underwritten and, in some cases, directly owned by military contractors. The National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), one of the three leading US commercial television networks is owned by General Electric (GE) a major military contractor. GE designed, manufactured or supplied parts or maintenance for nearly every important weapons system employed by the USA during the Gulf War, including the Patriot and Tomahawk cruise missiles. “Few TV viewers in the USA,” Lee notes “were aware of the inherent conflict of interest whenever NBC correspondents and consultants hailed the performance of US weapons.” Lee states that GE also sponsors news programmes on Ted Turner’s Cable News Network (CNN) and the two other main US commercial TV networks, Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). “With television networks dependent on sponsors for nearly 100 percent of their revenue,” he argues, “journalists are not encouraged to pursue stories that might reflect adversely on their corporate patrons.”
The case must not be overstated, but there are real structural problems and they face all of us in the area of advertising if not ownership. Do we run a story that affects our biggest advertiser? We must, of course, if we are to retain our journalistic integrity though we must give them a full opportunity to state their case in the usual way.
In the present case of the Trinidad Guardian the chairman of the company which publishes the Guardian, Mr Michael Mansoor, recently referred to what he said were sections of the Guardian’s editorial policy as outlined in 1987. Two sections are of particular interest: “The Guardian must maintain its independence without forgetting the fact that it was part of a conglomerate… and that such tensions as might arise between a free press and the government in power should not result in adversarial postures by the paper.” Though the Guardian may be in theory entitled to have such a policy provided it is known, clearly understood and accepted by its editorial staff (and there seems to be some doubt on this score) two questions must be asked, why did the Board of the Guardian adopt this apparently new editorial policy in 1987 and is it compatible with the ideology of a free press? Can an editor do his job without fear or favour if he has to remember that he is part of a conglomerate with the implication that he must protect its interests, and how can he avoid adversarial postures with the government from time to time if he is acting as the guardian of the people’s interests?
On the face of it this editorial policy is incompatible with press freedom, Mr Chow, Mr Madeira, Mr Cuffie, Ms Ganace and their colleagues are the victims of business expediency and the free press credentials of Trinidad and Tobago’s oldest newspaper will be suspect as long as this editorial policy is retained.
As an aside, may I mention that in Stabroek News there is a large degree of identification between ownership and editor. This is mainly due to the precarious circumstances in which it started in 1986 during a period of 1iberalisation introduced by former President Hoyte after President Burnham had died, and to the difficulty of raising capital for a newspaper in Guyana where it was not an attractive commercial proposition.
Press responsibility
Let us turn to the question of the responsibility of the press. The government has the police power and the authority provided by the electorate. The media wields some power and influence in the role it plays in shaping public opinion and keeping the government on its toes. It acquires such legitimacy as it possesses from the people when it is seen to act responsibly and in the public interest. Indeed without this legitimacy the media can all too easily be seen as a self-appointed elite or oligarchy. But they cannot acquire this legitimacy lightly. They must earn it by their continuing commitment to the highest professional standards of fair and objective reporting and by the quality and temper of their editorial comments. It goes without saying that they must have no private agenda or be the pawns of any group or party; their primary duty is to report all the news that’s fit to print, without malice or ill will. This is easier said than done. Journalism is a grossly undervalued profession. This is a great pity because it provides enormous opportunities and challenges…
A newspaper which is consistently sensationalist, careless of people’s reputations and unprofessional in its coverage debases the coinage. But it is the price that must be paid for press freedom and even a bad newspaper, of course, is subject to the laws of libel and contempt which are quite onerous and in need of revision. The alternative is censorship of one kind or another. As Albert Camus put it: “A free press may be good or bad, but a press without freedom can only be bad. For the press as for mankind, freedom is the opportunity for improvement; slavery is the certainty of deterioration.”