Richard Lord

A call was made in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day for the Gov­ern­ment to al­low jour­nal­ists at State-owned Caribbean New Me­dia Group (CN­MG) to be al­lowed to work with­out po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds made the call dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to yes­ter­day's si­mul­ta­ne­ous de­bate in the Sen­ate on two bills-the An­ti Gang and Bail Amend­ment Bills.The bills were pre­sent­ed for de­bate by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan.Hinds said there was "brew­ing hos­til­i­ty by the man­age­ment of CN­MG" against the news­room staff at the Mar­aval Road, Port-of-Spain, net­work.He said the man­age­ment was "act­ing like a gang, ter­ror­is­ing pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ists."

Hinds added that the in­ter­fer­ence was tak­en to "the point that they (jour­nal­ists) were com­plain­ing of be­ing told by mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment they should pub­lish (Gov­ern­ment) pro­pa­gan­da. That is gang be­hav­iour."Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Sub­has Pan­day then shout­ed: "PNM style."Hinds said he want­ed to ask the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment "to leave the pro­fes­sion­als in CN­MG alone, do not in­ter­fere (with them)."He said the PP Gov­ern­ment was "dic­ta­to­r­i­al."

He was al­so crit­i­cal of the Gov­ern­ment's men­tor­ing pro­gramme, which was launched in Port-of-Spain on Mon­day by for­mer US Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Col­in Pow­ell at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts, Port-of-Spain.Hinds said Pow­ell should have in­stead been tak­en di­rect­ly to crime-prone com­mu­ni­ties in T&T.Lat­er, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter John Sandy said the launch was broad­cast through­out T&T.