The National Communications Network (NCN) is a state-owned media agency and accordingly, it ought to be particularly mindful of its obligations to balance and fairness in its coverage of public issues.
It is not a paragon of either balance or fairness, and this has been pointed out by various persons and institutions from time to time.
For the record the proclivity on the part of government for utilizing state information agencies for partisan political purposes was not invented by the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) administration even though it will, doubtless, be recalled that media freedom was one of the prominent and recurring platforms of PPP agitation during its days in opposition.
Cynics might of course argue that the People’s National Congress (PNC) is not – given its own track record – ideally positioned to bellyache over issues of media freedom. That, however, would be a somewhat disingenuous argument if those cynics were to say in the same breath that we now live in an era of more and greater freedoms including freedom of information, which is exactly what the PPP/C never stops saying. The problem is that having roundly and persistently criticized its predecessor’s attitude to media freedom the PPP/C has proven to be equally adept in ensuring that it utilizes the state media to its own political advantage whilst denying its political opponents any really meaningful coverage through those agencies.
Of course, the problem of media coverage for opposition political parties becomes more acute during elections periods when the ruling party – in this case the PPP/C – usually seizes even firmer control of the state media entities. It is a period during which ‘concessions’ to the opposition parties are few and far between and carefully scrutinized by the ruling party’s media minders.
Last Friday’s reminder by Opposition Leader David Granger that A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) receives far less than what he believes is the party’s entitlement in terms of attention from both GINA and NCN can be seen in the context of what now appears to be the likelihood of general and/or municipal elections in the not too distant future.
Mr Granger has of course conflated GINA with NCN, when the two are not designed to perform the same function. The first is a government information agency, not a news agency, and unlike in the case of NCN, therefore, the question of ‘balance’ does not arise. That aside, where NCN is concerned, one imagines that Mr Granger would have every incentive in the current circumstances to issue a public reminder of the need for APNU to have its fair slice of the state media ‘pie.’ We know too, that the disposition of the joint opposition to the financial allocations in the country’s annual budget is a reflection of views on balanced coverage by the state media.
At last Friday’s media briefing Mr Granger, apart from reminding of APNU’s concern about balanced coverage by the state media, made the now well-documented remark about if GINA and NCN “don’t hear”… to which persons in the briefing room added the rejoinder “they will feel.”
GINA – not, one suspects, without political urging – saw something so dark and dangerous in what Mr Granger had to say that it immediately expressed fears for its own well-being and the well-being of its employees, adding that it was in the process of registering its concern “with the competent authority.”
Interestingly, the statement does not name the competent authority though the tone of the release would appear to suggest that buried not too deeply in what Mr Granger had to say was a physical threat.
It not the opinion of this newspaper that there was any implied physical threat in what Mr Granger said on Friday. Moreover, it would seem that GINA’s grossly overdone response may be an opening salvo in what could be an extended exchange between the government and the state media and information agencies, on the one hand, and the political opposition, on the other, that will be a recurring theme in the period leading to the next general elections, whenever those are held.
By assuming a decidedly alarmist posture in response to what Mr Granger had to say GINA may have – deliberately or otherwise – sent a signal that the PPP/C is in an election mode which, of course, may well mean that now, more than ever, it will be disinclined to concede the balanced coverage by the state-owned media which ANPU seeks.
