Very soon, the Guyana National Broadcasting Authority (GNBA) will begin taking in complaints from the public on offensive content that is broadcast on television, radio and cable, according to the entity’s Chairman, Leslie Sobers, who said that attention will also be given to the far-flung areas.
This citizen monitoring, he said, will complement the active monitoring that is currently being done by GNBA staff. In the monitoring room located at its Lamaha Street office, the staff sit and listen or watch various programmes and flag violations which include obscene language in songs and audiovisual content during prime time hours.
Noting that the existing legislation outlines the steps a citizen can take once they hear any offensive content, Sobers informed that GNBA is preparing itself to begin accepting written complaints. He assured that these complaints would be confidential and will not be shared with the offending broadcaster.
“All they need to do is write to the GNBA, giving us the time of the programme, the date and an idea of what the programme is and even [if] they don’t know what the programme is, once we have the time and the date and the station, we will get the information,” he said, before pointing out that a note of the offending word(s) will also be accepted.
Sobers explained that very shortly GNBA will begin sensitising citizens as to the steps they need to take to send in complaints. He said that a strategic plan which encapsulates this is in the final stages of compilation. “As soon as we finish compiling that document in its entirety, we will start rolling out these steps”, he stated.
For the far-flung areas, Sobers indicated that the Authority is looking at securing volunteers to help with the monitoring. He noted that during outreach programmes, communities would be asked to select persons who “may be willing to listen to [the] radio particularly and tell us if they hear anything …distasteful.”
Sobers said that the Authority is also contemplating having a grouping of persons in the communities who would be willing to give some of their time to listening to the radio and looking at the television to detect wrongdoing and inform the Authority of these thereafter. He assured that the names of these volunteers will be kept in confidence.
The Chairman reminded that every broadcasting station by law is compelled to keep recordings of their programmes for five years and, as such, the GNBA ought to be able to access them within this period of time. “We can call upon them at any time to produce their broadcast logs…or their transmission logs,” Sobers related.
He explained that after receiving the complaint, the GNBA will contact the broadcaster responsible and ask that a recording of that specific programme be produced. That recording will be compared with the recordings of the GNBA and an external agency that also monitors the airwaves of Guyana.
“Upon request and at a cost, the authority can get a specific recording and upon request we can get anything from them within any six-month period. So if the offence was committed last week, we could call on that company, get the information, of course we will have to pay for it,” he stated.
Sobers said that recognising that the GNBA has quasi-judicial authority, rules of procedure to deal with such complaints have to be put in place “in a manner that is in keeping with courtroom procedure and rules of evidence.”
Further, Sobers, who is an attorney-at-law, said that on receiving such a complaint, the tapes would be examined and a comparison will be made, following which the broadcaster will be called upon to explain.
He said that at the Special Investigation Committee (SIC) level, the broadcaster may give an explanation that is satisfactory or even an undertaking to take corrective action or steps to prevent a reoccurrence. He said that if the committee is satisfied then the matter is dealt with at that level. If the matter is of such a nature that the committee believes that it is beyond its remit, it will be referred to the Board for a formal hearing. Any decision made by the Authority can be appealed in the Full Court of the High Court and as such the GNBA has to ensure it has proper procedures in place.
“We are open to scrutiny by the High Court,” Sobers said, adding that as such, the Board will not be allowed to do things in a manner that is “contrary to the rule of law or established procedures.”
Sobers related that if the broadcaster is continuous in their infractions then the formal hearing will have to decide whether the broadcaster will be suspended from air, the license revoked or a fine imposed.
