The challenge that the Government of Guyana whichever political administration holds the reins of power will always face whenever it make a gesture that appears designed to create a more robust culture of media professionalism, meaning, among other things, the freedom to think and to pronounce free of any kind of censorial constraint, has to do with what has long been the insidious usurpation of the prerogative of political control of much of the information that finds its way into the public space. It does so not just by ‘owning’ state media, which rightly belong to taxpayers, but also by ‘owning’ or supporting anomalous ‘media houses’ to do its information dissemination ‘will.’ Another of the means through which it can seek to exert control is by utilizing access to state controlled advertising.
One of the more undignified examples of the embedded nature of government control of state owned media houses is the unceasing theatre of revolving doors at the Guyana Chronicle and the other state owned media houses whenever control of the state machinery changes political hands. With changes in political administration a revolving door is opened to allow for the comings and goings of those Heads of state media houses who become unfit to ‘fit the bill’ insofar as the ‘direction’ of a new political dispensation is concerned. The Heads of these media houses, are, after all, valued, much more for their malleability, their predisposition for bending in the political wind than their professional competence and their commitment to free media; so that their tenures are forever determined by the vicissitudes of elections’ outcomes.
Given these circumstances it is to be expected that such declarations as are made by government that have to do with an intention to undertake an initiative for the ‘betterment’ of the media in Guyana are met, unfailingly, with a pull the other leg response from both the public and the profession. The simple truth is that the long embedded mistrust of the intentions of government in matters that have to do with the qualitative enhancement of the media are now sufficiently deeply rooted to cause both media professionals and the public, as a whole, to become seized with violent attacks of cynicism whenever official altruistic sounding pronouncements are made.
That, regrettably, is probably likely to be the response among many professionals to the recent official promise of a “Guyana Media and Communications Academy”. Indeed, among the more cynical, the pronouncement could well be seen as the start of a brisk gallop by a fiercely charging Trojan Horse, designed to ensure continuity of what, over the years, has been, through one means or another, the incremental usurpation by the political powers that be of media freedom. Truth be told, even the incumbent political administration itself could not be so naïve as to think that our political culture is not far too steeped in a condition of unyielding government control of huge influential chunks of state media as to cause even the most naïve among us to think that what it is now offering is no more than a field of dreams.
If there can be no question than that there exists an urgent need to address the issue of the extent of the resources available for media training in Guy-ana, then, surely, it would be the sounder thing to do, to graft those resources onto those already available at the University of Guyana in order to add value to the existing training programme there rather than to effect the creation of a new state-run Guyana Media and Communication Academy buttressed, it seems, by the absurd belief that a political administration in Guyana can suddenly ‘get religion’ on issues of media freedom and media professionalism.
The problem with Minister McCoy’s ‘take’ on the significance of the ‘Academy’ is that it runs the considerable risk of being reduced by much of the media fraternity and a substantial portion of the rest of the populace to the level of a gesture for the simple reason that its ‘vision’ flies in the face of the objective conditions that have obtained in our country for decades and which no political administration has ever lifted a finger to change.
The Academy through which, we are told, media workers are expected to access over 2,000 online courses, is unlikely to become a hotbed of free and open debate on issues like state ownership of media and the cynical use of advertising revenue to seek to rein in media freedom even more.
The dire need to expand the frontiers of media training in Guyana, notwithstanding, media houses and journalists who have lived through the slavish addiction of political administrations to an unyielding tendency to seek to bring media houses ‘in line’ or, not infrequently, to ‘punish’ them for not complying, are likely to be highly skeptical about the real motive behind this recent Academy disclosure. If the new state announced institution may benefit from a launch loaded with high profile ceremony, whether or not what it has to offer will contribute to the adjustment of the prevailing political disposition to enhancing media professionalism whilst, simultaneously, creating a culture of genuine media freedom are the real issues that must attend the creation of such an institution. Are the political powers that be prepared to even contemplate, far less seriously discuss those issues at this time?
