President David Granger maintains that the Government Information Agency (GINA) has a responsibility to provide coverage of the opposition.
Granger’s position, which was the same one he had as leader of the opposition, is in direct contrast with what was expressed by the administration’s Director of Public Information Imran Khan. In a February 9 post on his Facebook wall, Khan stated that GINA’s “role is not to cover the opposition. It is to cover the elected government of the day.”
Responding to the question on his weekly Public Interest broadcast, Granger said, “As far as I am concerned the Government Information Services, the Government News Agency must cover all three branches of government: legislative, executive and judicial.” He added, “The people of Guyana have to be better informed, and you cannot inform the people by depriving them of information. The people need to know and that is my policy. I’ve announced that policy while I was in opposition and I maintain that policy now that I’m in government.”
The issue of opposition coverage has come to the forefront again in the light of the failure of GINA and the Department of Public Information (DPI) to provide the public with coverage of the opposition side of the house during the recently concluded budget debates.
In the face of numerous criticisms, Khan maintained that the taxpayer-funded DPI and GINA constitute the public relations machinery of the elected government not the elected opposition.
He charged that those who challenged his position were confused about the role and function of the DPI and GINA.
During the 2012 budget debate, Granger had written to then Speaker of the National Assembly Raphael Trotman complaining about biased coverage by GINA.
As a result of the lack of balance, the parliamentary opposition had over the next two years voted against the monies being allocated to the two GINA as well as the National Communications Network in the national budget.
They used their parliamentary majority in both 2013 and 2014 to award these agencies subventions of $1 each.
Khan had said:
DPI and GINA constitute the PR division of the elected government of the day in lieu of a fully constituted Ministry of Information. If one were to take the expressed expectation to its logical conclusion then the Department of Sport (within the Ministry of Education) should be expected to fund and offer coverage of the PPP’s sporting activities such as the annual Cheddi Jagan Cricket Competition etc as the PPP is a duly elected parliamentary party. Such a conclusion however would be absurd.
The DPI is responsible for promoting the work, policies, programmes, plans and activities of the elected government of the day to all citizens. It has no responsibility to cover and highlight the PPP. That is the function of the state media – NCN and Chronicle.
The expectation of DPI covering the PPP is misplaced and unfortunately irrational. DPI is not state media. It is, in simple terms, the government’s PR arm, with clear responsibilities and a defined mandate.
That the DPI team has offered some limited coverage of the PPP members is not as a result of an obligation to do so but a judgement to keep persons informed as to who is on the floor during the debates (as the DPi is doing live updates).
It is excusable that persons who are not trained in journalism might have held such expectations and have sought clarification. It is however regrettable and indeed a sad commentary on the state of affairs that practitioners of journalism, to whom the public look for informed reports and views, can piously offer as fact a patently misinformed view. In unrefined language, one cannot escape pondering who it is that really “ain’t kay”.
