Jones P Madeira latched on to his first ma­jor sto­ry as a cub re­porter from his beat at the Pi­ar­co air­port back in the mid-1960s. The sto­ry re­lat­ed to Dr Ched­di Ja­gan’s pas­sage through, of all places, Moscow, Rus­sia, in the So­vi­et Union. It was sto­ry enough to set off the an­ti-com­mu­nist hys­te­ria of the Amer­i­can CIA and British MI5 agen­cies, which were cen­tral­ly in­volved in deny­ing Dr Ja­gan and his Peo­ple’s Pro­gres­sive Par­ty a sec­ond term in of­fice even though they had won the ma­jor­i­ty vote/seats in the 1963 elec­tions. More im­por­tant­ly for him, Madeira’s re­port­ing from the air­port rec­om­mend­ed him to the pro­duc­ers of 610 Ra­dio’s ma­jor cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme, the News­mak­ers. There, he re­ceived the ben­e­fit of work­ing with se­nior broad­cast jour­nal­ists of the qual­i­ty of Leo De Leon, Al­fred Agui­ton, Raoul Pan­tin, Dick Hen­der­son, Ash­ton Cham­bers, Tony Williams, and from Guyana, Hugh Chol­monde­ley, Ken Cors­bie, and sports jour­nal­ist Joseph “Reds” Per­reira.

Jones’ hori­zons were con­sid­er­ably broad­ened and skills en­hanced be­cause of a two-year stint at the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice in Lon­don. That ex­pe­ri­ence was lat­er de­vel­oped through his work at the Caribbean Broad­cast­ing Union and in the Sec­re­tari­at of Cari­com, led by William De­mas and Al­is­ter McIn­tyre, two of the ar­chi­tects of the in­te­gra­tion move­ment.

The fruits of such an as­so­ci­a­tion placed Jones in the po­si­tion to ini­ti­ate the ex­change of tele­vi­sion re­gion­al news and cur­rent af­fairs pro­grammes, Carib­Vi­sion and Carib­Scope. Pro­duc­tion of the pro­grammes by the CBU re­quired na­tion­al tele­vi­sion sta­tions to send their news-of-the-day sto­ries on the lives, times, and cel­e­bra­tions of peo­ple and the po­lit­i­cal gov­er­nance and eco­nom­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties and as­pi­ra­tions.

That rep­re­sent­ed the out­work­ings of the trav­els of Jones along the road of re­gion­al­ism; he ap­pre­ci­at­ed that on­ly to­geth­er can the Caribbean re­gion of mi­ni-states sur­vive in a world of re­gion­al and con­ti­nen­tal blocs.

Jones did the same at Ra­dio Trinidad, pro­duc­ing Caribbean-ori­ent­ed news and cur­rent af­fairs pro­grammes, in­clud­ing the shar­ing of the so­ca, reg­gae, and the zouk of the French-Caribbean through T&T’s lead­ing so­ca disc jock­ey Phil “The Thrill” Sim­mons, Wyn Cal­len­der of Bar­ba­dos, and Mike Rogers in St Lu­cia: “A mu­si­cal con­nec­tion, ah re­gion­al vi­bra­tion.” It was an un­der­stand­ing by Jones that peo­ple need their cul­ture to live.

Back home from his so­journs in Eng­land, Bar­ba­dos, and Guyana, Jones took on the very chal­leng­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as Head of News and Cur­rent Af­fairs at the state-owned tele­vi­sion sta­tion, Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion, a job that fore­told much grief but which turned in­to his finest hour.

It’s im­por­tant to note that TTT and NBS Ra­dio 610 (the lat­ter pre-ex­ist­ed TTT) were brought in­to ex­is­tence as an el­e­ment for the at­tain­ment of po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence from Britain—T&T had to have a com­mu­ni­ca­tions me­dia to fa­cil­i­tate our de­vel­op­ment as a na­tion in need of in­for­ma­tion and per­spec­tives.

Jones P Madeira made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to­wards achiev­ing that ob­jec­tive both at NBS Ra­dio and when he for­mal­ly en­tered TTT, from where he pro­duced news and cur­rent af­fairs pro­gram­ming rang­ing from cov­er­age and analy­ses of the cam­paigns of the gen­er­al elec­tions and bud­get pre­sen­ta­tions to car­ni­val fea­tures in keep­ing with such lo­cal pro­grammes that went be­fore from the likes of Ho­race James, Aun­ty Hazel Ward-Red­man, Hol­ly Bea­t­udi­er, Rikky-Tikky, and oth­ers.

In his time as Head of News and Cur­rent Af­fairs at TTT and at Ra­dio Trinidad, Jones or­gan­ised the cov­er­age of ma­jor meet­ings and con­ven­tions of the par­ties with crews of jour­nal­ists and com­men­ta­tors who analysed the man­i­festo con­tent of the par­ties, their claims, con­tentions, and pro­pa­gan­da ma­te­r­i­al.

He was not afraid to al­low the hosts and com­men­ta­tors, such as Sel­wyn Ryan, John La Guerre, Den­nis Pan­tin, and oth­ers, to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween re­al­i­ty, false claims, and pie-in-the-sky promis­es. But then the abun­dance of cor­po­rate dol­lars and par­ty pol­i­tics in­ter­vened to snatch away ob­jec­tive pro­gram­ming of in­for­ma­tion and ed­u­ca­tion to as­sist vot­ers to dis­cern re­al­i­ty from fic­tion.

The par­ties be­gan re­ceiv­ing mul­ti-mil­lions, which un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly swept out of the way any at­tempt to car­ry on the tra­di­tion es­tab­lished by Jones. The de­gen­er­a­tive as­pects of par­ty cam­paign­ing cer­tain­ly thrived since then.

One very demon­stra­tive piece of ev­i­dence of Madeira’s im­par­tial­i­ty and in­sis­tence on al­low­ing dif­fer­ent views to cir­cu­late in the in­for­ma­tion en­vi­ron­ment was his car­ry­ing live of a con­fer­ence or­gan­ised by the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha un­der the lead­er­ship of the re­doubtable Sat Ma­haraj, with Desmond Hoyte, Pres­i­dent of Guyana, giv­ing the fea­ture ad­dress. That hap­pened when the PNM was in pow­er; Jones was even-hand­ed, bal­anced in his pro­gram­ming, and un­afraid to deal frontal­ly with po­lit­i­cal high­hand­ed­ness.

If you have been a jour­nal­ist for 50 years cov­er­ing politi­cians and their ac­tiv­i­ties and you have not con­flict­ed with them in gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion, then you have not been do­ing your job. Jones had many run-ins with sev­er­al min­is­ters and op­po­si­tion mem­bers. The con­flicts and, on oc­ca­sion, cuss-offs, one with a min­is­ter who had cab­i­net re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for TTT and who was fond of re­fer­ring to him­self as the “Chi­nese Chop­per/Shop­keep­er”.

I wit­nessed him dis­play­ing his full range of colour­ful lan­guage against Jones for some per­ceived act against the gov­ern­ment. Jones re­spond­ed with diplo­ma­cy. But that was mild stuff com­pared to what was to fol­low.

To be con­tin­ued.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er – free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and News Di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona and St. Au­gus­tine – In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.