Despite decades of concerns that governments have repeatedly abused the state media for political gain and to viciously attack opponents, the new PPP/C government plans to retain all aspects of the sector.
“We cannot see any immediate reason for the disbanding of any of the state media and therefore I cannot say that this is part of any plan to disband them,” Minister with responsibility for Public Affairs within the Office of the Prime Minister, Kwame McCoy, told Stabroek News in an interview.
McCoy holds responsibility for the state media which includes NCN, GNNL which produces the Guyana Chronicle and the Department of Public Information (DPI) .
The Irfaan Ali-led PPP/C government believes that there is a place in Guyana for state media entities but that they must be transparently and efficiently managed, promises it says it will keep.
With more than half a billion dollars allocated in the 2020 Budget to boost state media capacities, McCoy said that a plan for the overhauling of the agencies will soon begin and will look at the human resource capacity.
“We want to start with a human resource audit because you have to know what we have in the system and if it would facilitate the objectives for the plan we have. It is the same for any business model, you want to know the skillsets of your personnel to effectively plan so it ensures that your goals are met. So assessing human resources is first to be looked at”, he said.
“Also, on the side of the capacity of the company, we will look at what they have in terms of equipment and to upgrade the technology to meet international standards. And while we will simultaneously be assessing all the agencies, our focus for revamping will first see NCN being worked on. I believe that NCN has to be, at the least, the national yardstick for what quality broadcast is. Our vision is to lead, not only Guyana but the Caribbean in broadcasting. To do that we have to retool the entire place and invest in equipment, personnel, ensure proper management and that there be professionalism in the execution of the operation,” he added.
McCoy said that although there are a number of areas that can be highlighted, he would not be focusing on the ineptitude and mismanagement of the agencies during the past five years under the APNU+AFC “because now is the time to just get the job done and talking about what should have been…. We will act and be judged on those actions,” he said.
During its term in office from 1992 to 2015, PPP/C governments had been routinely accused of exploiting the state media and encouraging sordid attack on opponents and independent figures.
McCoy emphasized that the agencies will not be used as a “political tool”.
“The state media won’t be used as a political tool. It is understandable that any government would have an advantage in the state media. So we might too because a large part of its responsibility is to inform plans for nationalistic objectives, promote unifying programmes among other initiatives,” he said.
Further, he explained, “When people talk about politicizing they tend to stretch what it is used for, say that government programmes and activities and party positions but they are two different things. The state media is there to support government plans.”
Typical example
Pointing to a request from the Guyana Police Force for a community outreach programme that it needs advertising support for, McCoy said “here is a typical example. This is police’s community outreach…this is not a Freedom House activity.”
The PPP/C he believes “has adequate machinery to carry out its public relations work and won’t have to use state media reach to do so”.
At the Guyana Chronicle, McCoy said that while it did not make considerable profits, it is not operating at a loss. He believes that a state newspaper is still needed and with proper planning and management he hopes that it can start “holding its own”. In the areas of revenue streaming, he said that focus should not be only on the newspaper since GNNL’s printing capacity can also be tapped into and contracted out to clients looking for printing services.
“In terms of profit it is not doing badly. There is much more that can be done to enhance GNNL. It has potential and I believe if we examine various proposals and possibilities they can make more revenue than they currently are. Those are some of the things I would love the board to look at. They can do printing for other agencies there is a lot of potential in that so we have to set a holistic plan for GNNL,” he said.
He pointed to his Budget debate presentation and echoed most of what he said there. “When you examine what was taking place you had a situation where you had total demoralisation; the morale within these agencies, low; absolute low. You check on the equipment of these places, virtually non-existent. When you check to see what was going on, it was all about filling up the places with a whole lot of people, paying them the salaries, fulling it up and paying salaries, but no interest in their actual welfare and the work that has to be done,” he had told the National Assembly during his maiden address.
“You found, even a tri-caster not even working. The news could collapse at any time. You can’t find, and there is one thing I would love to mention here but for security reasons I wouldn’t mention it, but the total breakdown of systems and the absence of the right tools and equipment to carry out the functions and the work, and I want to suspect that there was a massive raid at NCN and all those places, but it’s only time before we find out…,” he added.
Turning to DPI, McCoy noted that the agency is expected to keep abreast with evolving technologies in an effort to deliver timely information to Guyanese, both here and in the diaspora but this is currently not the case.
NCN, he said, will be retooled and monies will be invested in training, in the welfare of the staff, “because as I said, we took over a place that the people there are totally demoralized; no kind of guidance and vision and leadership were provided to these young talented staff.”
“You would have better management of these places; management that could help to steer them in the right direction, that could deliver on the mandate of making sure that the public information sector, especially the public information sector because it is run by the State, that this sector would be one that would be admired, and would be a leading example across the Caribbean. We will pay a lot of attention to training. You can’t talk about developing human resources and without training them, preparing them for the new world. Every day you have new techniques being used in IT and social media and in every area of the world, every sector, and new techniques. You got to understand that you have to constantly upgrade people by giving them training,” he stressed.
“Media development, broadcast modernisation, those are all areas that we will be focused on and we will make sure that people benefit in such a way that they will be able to contribute significantly to our national development, because that is what we are all about and that is why we’re here,” he added.
