Citing the need to preserve press freedom, the Inter-American Press Associat-ion (IAPA) has called on the Guyana Government to review its current distribution practice for official advertising to ensure that neither Stabroek News nor any other media house “is adversely affected.”
The December 27th, 2019 statement from IAPA follows a complaint lodged with it on December 23rd, 2019 by Stabroek News, citing the sharp reduction of state advertisements from the Department of Public Information (DPI) since August 2019 as constituting an attack by the government on press freedom.
DPI instituted a radical cut in state ads to Stabroek News in September, Octo-ber and November after the newspaper had temporarily stopped accepting the placement of ads because of a significant outstanding debt of over $22 million. After DPI substantially reduced its debt, Stabroek News invited it to resume advertising normally for the month of August but this did not occur.
In its statement, IAPA, a longstanding press advocacy group representing media organisations in South America, the Carib-bean and North America, said that it has expressed concern to the Guyana Government regarding the complaint by Stabroek News that it had been targeted for its journalistic content.
IAPA said that in a communication sent to the Prime Minister, Moses Nagamootoo, and the Director of the Department of Public Information, Imran Khan, it asked the government to review its current practice of distribution of official advertising.
The letter, signed by the president of the IAPA, Christopher Barnes, of the Jamaican newspaper The Gleaner, and the president of the Committee on Free-dom of the Press and Infor-mation, Roberto Rock, of the Mexican portal La Silla Rota, stated as follows:
“On behalf of the Inter American Press Associa-tion (IAPA), we wish to express our concern regarding the complaint of the Stabroek News of Guyana, one of our members, pertaining to discrimination in the distribution of official advertising in reprisal for its journalistic content.
“This practice, as outlined, is incompatible with the Declaration of Chapul-tepec, signed in 2002 by President Bharrat Jagdeo, and represents a grotesque act of discrimination against the press to which IAPA always pays special attention. This form of censorship affects not only a publishing house and its journalists; it affects the society as a whole which is deprived of relevant information on the performance of government and elected officials.
“IAPA holds further that the application of discriminatory policies in the granting of official advertising can be construed as acts of corruption whereby public resources provided by citizens are used for the private interests of administrators, becoming a form of embezzlement of public funds. State advertising should be delivered with full transparency and technical criteria, equity and through efficient management of public resources.
“The Declaration of Chapultepec states that `the media and journalists should neither be discriminated against nor favored because of what they write or say’, and that `the granting or withdrawal of government advertising may not be used to reward or punish the media or individual journalists.’ These concepts also included in the Declaration of Prin-ciples on Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
“It is against this background that IAPA calls on the Guyanese Government, in the interest of preserving freedom of expression in the country, to review its current practice of distribution of official advertising so as to ensure that neither Stabroek News [nor] any other media house is adversely affected.”
Stabroek News Editor-in-Chief Anand Persaud has welcomed the intervention by IAPA as a reflection of the importance of regional solidarity in the defence of press freedom. Persaud said that DPI’s capricious allocating of ads since August 2019 bespeaks an intent to punish the newspaper for its line of reporting on the government in the aftermath of the successful December 21st, 2018 motion of no confidence against it.
Stabroek News’s contention has been that DPI slashed ads to punish the newspaper for its forthright reporting on the government and that this was in flagrant violation of the Inter-American press freedom Declaration of Chapultepec. DPI’s argument has been that the newspaper invited the cutoff by ceasing the acceptance of DPI ads in May. DPI has, however, given other conflicting explanations and President David Granger later said that “fairness” of media houses should be a determinant in the placing of state ads.
After not placing any state ads with Stabroek News for the month of October and placing a small number in November, the DPI increased its allocation to the newspaper in December, which Persaud has welcomed although he has said that DPI continued to discriminate against the newspaper by allocating the lion’s share of state ads to the state-owned Guyana Chronicle and the Kaieteur News.
As a result of the cut in ads and the prospect that DPI could intensify its campaign against the newspaper, Stabroek News took a decision to raise the price of its daily edition from $80 to $100.
The IAPA, a non-profit organisation, is dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and expression in the Americas and it is made up of more than 1,300 publications from the western hemisphere.
