International Press Institute congress hears of gov’t discrimination in state ads

The Congress of the International Press Institute today heard how the Guyana Government had discriminated against Stabroek News in the placement of advertisements and the newspaper’s Editor-in-Chief Anand Persaud called for state ads to be handled by a professional advertising agency.
Persaud was invited to speak at the IPI Congress in Trinidad and Tobago on the topic ‘Manipulating the Media: Government Advertising as a Reward or Punishment for Media Outlets’.
In a session moderated by well-known CNN anchor Jim Clancy, Persaud laid out how the government had cut off state advertising in 2006 without a credible explanation.
He said that this signalled the beginning of a cycle of rewarding and punishing of media houses in complete violation of the free press Declaration of Chapultepec which the government had signed in 2002. While Stabroek News lost its ads, they were taken up by the Kaieteur News which had supported the government’s actions against SN.
Persaud said that what the government did in the following months “would certainly be worthy of a medal in Olympic gymnastics”.
He noted that 17 months later the government resumed advertising without an explanation. Persaud told the Congress that the real reason for the resumption became clearer a month later when the Guyana Times, whose main principal, is a friend of the then President was launched. Persaud said that it was clear then that the intention was to begin giving ads to the Guyana Times. He said this was borne out less than a year later when the Guyana Times began receiving state advertising.
“Bear in mind we hadn’t gotten advertising for 17 months. We were a 20-year-old newspaper not having gotten a cent for 17 months but a newspaper which was just 11 months, had no credibility, no circulation…it began receiving state advertising when there was no basis for that”, he stated.
Persaud told the congress at the Hyatt Regency in Port-of-Spain that Stabroek News then began running monthly surveys showing the state ads distribution among the various newspapers and within months, the Guyana Times was receiving as many ads as SN and was even surpassing Kaieteur News which had previously been favoured.
In August 2010, the government again cut off advertisements -this time to all three private newspapers – in favour of an eprocurement website and the state newspaper and the PPP-aligned Mirror newspaper. Persaud condemned this.
“In complete contravention of the Declaration of Chapultepec which we signed …the government is giving ads to the state newspaper and a party affiliated newspaper”, but not the private, independent media, Persaud said.
Asked by Clancy whether there isn’t the temptation in cases like this for media houses to soften reportage on the government in return for the ads, Persaud replied “Absolutely not. I think the role of the newspaper and certainly if we are wedded to the mission is to stand up and fight for what you believe in. I think what our case shows is that you can stand up and actually fight back and win…governments don’t always win …they may try to get rid of you but you can fight them back”, to resounding applause.
Stressing that there were no layoffs, Persaud said “we put up our sails” and embarked on a programme to shift the financial model of the newspaper when the second round of cut-offs came. This included commercializing the website, creating an epaper, and raising advertising rates and the cover price of the daily which had not been increased for many years.
Persaud told the gathering at the congress which included delegates from 90 countries, “We are entitled as a legitimate player in the industry to a portion of that advertising …we are entitled on behalf of our readership to a portion of that advertising because they need to see government ads, they need to see PSAs (public service announcements).” This was even more important, Persaud said, because many of these ads were for procurement in the massive public sector infrastructural programme.
Asked by Clancy about options for handling state ads, Persaud said “It definitely has to be depoliticized. You cannot have a president’s office deciding on things like advertising. That needs to be taken completely out of the public sphere and put in the hands of the professionals…so you take it out of the hands of the politicians and put it in the hands of professionals and they make professional decisions”, he said to applause.
The panel also featured Eleonora Rabinovich, Director, Freedom of Expression Programme, Association for Civil Rights, Argentina. She spoke about the growing trend of the use of state advertising to punish newspapers in Latin America. She said that this was across the entire spectrum of governments whether leftist or rightist.
She adverted to a seminal Argentinian Supreme Court decision which came out against the use of state advertising to discriminate over content. The decision, she said, essentially affirmed freedom of expression and has entered regional jurisprudence as a precedent.
Also on the panel was Guyanese broadcaster Clive Bacchus, the Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief, Federation Media Group, St Kitts.
The congress concludes later today. One of the high points yesterday was the awarding of double Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, David S Rohde with the IPI World Press Freedom Hero Award. Rohde’s investigative pieces twice resulted in him being held captive – once by the Bosnian Serbs while he was investigating the Srebrenica massacre and then by the Taliban while working as part of a team of reporters in Afghanistan.
Also awarded was Iryna Vidanava, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of 34 Multimedia Magazine, Belarus. There was also a citation for the late, long-serving Bahamian head of the Tribune newspaper, Sir Etienne Dupuch.
IPI was set up in 1950 to advance the cause of journalism wherever it is practised. This was the first time it held its conference in the Caribbean. A number of Guyanese journalists attended the event.