Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter and chair­man of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Jack Warn­er says he nev­er at­tacked the me­dia. What he did do, he said, was ex­pose what he right­ful­ly con­sid­ered to be the du­plic­i­tous and disin­gen­u­ous be­hav­iour of one who works in the me­dia. His com­ments, in a state­ment to the me­dia yes­ter­day ti­tled "The Me­dia and Me," came days af­ter he sin­gled out on tele­vi­sion two ar­ti­cles pub­lished last Sun­day in the Ex­press by in­ves­tiga­tive re­porter, Asha Javeed.

In his two-page state­ment, Warn­er said free­dom of the press car­ried with it a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to be fair, re­spon­si­ble and to ob­jec­tive­ly, and as far as pos­si­ble, ac­cu­rate­ly mir­ror the so­ci­ety. He said jour­nal­ists must keep more than an arm's length from politi­cians and pri­ma­ry de­fin­ers of so­ci­ety and they had an oblig­a­tion to de­clare their re­la­tion­ships for the sake of fair­ness, as is the norm in all first world coun­tries.

Warn­er's state­ment con­tin­ued: "We have jus­ti­fi­able rea­son to be con­cerned about the me­dia bias in the coun­try among the con­ven­tion­al me­dia. "We sup­port a free press. And that sit­u­a­tion has not changed and will nev­er change un­der the present gov­ern­ment. "How­ev­er, we must make the point that free­dom of the press is a right that me­dia en­joy on be­half of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go."

He said a con­tent analy­sis of the main me­dia in the coun­try would show a nar­row fo­cus and ei­ther the in­abil­i­ty or re­luc­tance of jour­nal­ists to ask and seek an­swers to rel­e­vant ques­tions of na­tion­al in­ter­est. On the oc­ca­sion of World Press Free­dom Day in May, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her ap­proach had al­ways sup­port­ed me­dia free­dom and she pledged that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment would nev­er re­nege on that com­mit­ment.

She said then, "I made a solemn pledge to the me­dia, which our Gov­ern­ment will ho­n­our at all times. "We will de­fend me­dia free­dom with all our strength and leg­isla­tive ca­pac­i­ty be­cause we know that with­out a free me­dia our democ­ra­cy would be de­formed." She added that no gov­ern­ment had the right to take away or in­fringe in any way on the right of the me­dia to op­er­ate freely since the Con­sti­tu­tion en­shrined the right to a free press and the free­dom of ex­pres­sion "and we must ac­cept no less."