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Monday, July 14, 2025

A real and present danger

by

20121006

"I have lis­tened to the voic­es of the man on the street and the ut­ter­ances of learned pro­fes­sion­als from their re­spec­tive plat­forms and un­der­stand some of the sources of con­fu­sion. And while I may not agree with all of the sen­ti­ments and views ex­pressed, I em­brace the de­bate and demon­stra­tion. It is your con­sti­tu­tion­al right to so do and we wel­come those who feel so pas­sion­ate­ly about the state of the na­tion and its fu­ture."-Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Sec­tion 34.

On Feb­ru­ary 6, 1996, the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MATT) re­quest­ed a meet­ing with then prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day over his in­creas­ing con­cerns with me­dia stan­dards which were be­ing ar­tic­u­lat­ed pub­licly. As the then pres­i­dent of MATT, I was man­dat­ed to lead a del­e­ga­tion which met with Pan­day to dis­cuss the is­sues.

Pan­day clear­ly out­lined his ma­jor con­cern that he did not in­tend to al­low the me­dia to bring his gov­ern­ment down as they seemed pre­pared to do. "They did it to Er­ic Williams, they did it to Cham­bers, they did to Robin­son, they did it to Man­ning, but I do not in­tend to al­low it to hap­pen to me," he said.

Patrick Man­ning, who both pre­ced­ed and suc­ceed­ed Pan­day as PM, nev­er came to terms with the me­dia ei­ther, and con­trary to pop­u­lar opin­ion, gen­er­al­ly re­lied on his own coun­sel. The then PM stat­ed at a PNM meet­ing in Wood­ford Square on Ju­ly 13, 2009: "I long for the day, my dear friends, when I could truth­ful­ly say that the me­dia in this coun­try [are] liv­ing up to their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. I leave it there."

By the end of his term, so ob­sessed was he with the me­dia, that he ac­tu­al­ly paid a vis­it to a ra­dio sta­tion to reg­is­ter his protest. Lat­er, he would tell the Par­lia­ment that me­dia own­ers had fall­en un­der the con­trol of drug barons. Pre­sum­ably, that may have been used as a pre­text for his eaves­drop­ping on jour­nal­ists.

The me­dia is now, how­ev­er, fac­ing a far more se­ri­ous threat. Suni­ty Ma­haraj, Dr Sheila Ram­per­sad, Dr Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar and Vaneisa Baksh, have al­ready com­ment­ed on the dis­turb­ing pro­gramme fea­tur­ing five gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, in which a min­is­ter sin­gled out a fe­male jour­nal­ist with the chill­ing phrase "and youknowher his­to­ry . . . whereshe livesand so on..."

At the risk of be­ing la­belled sanc­ti­mo­nious, the on­go­ing cam­paign against in­de­pen­dent jour­nal­ists strikes at the very heart of the democ­ra­cy that the PM sug­gests she cher­ish­es. The TnT Mir­ror has re­port­ed-and I have per­son­al knowl­edge of the fact-that the gov­ern­ment is now ac­tive­ly us­ing the same spy­ing equip­ment for which Man­ning was so sound­ly con­demned, as it in­ter­cepts the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of jour­nal­ists in the per­for­mance of their du­ties.

Fol­low­ing Denyse Renne's sto­ry of the procla­ma­tion of the Sec­tion 34, and a sub­se­quent in­ves­ti­ga­tion of a mat­ter in­volv­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, she was sub­ject­ed to a cam­paign of in­tim­i­da­tion in­clud­ing what pur­port­ed to be In­ter­net rev­e­la­tions of her pri­vate med­ical records and per­son­al his­to­ry.

The Gov­ern­ment, led by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, has pub­licly an­nounced that they are tar­get­ing jour­nal­ists who they con­sid­er hos­tile to the of­fi­cial agen­da. In a press re­lease ex­plain­ing his ac­tions, Mr Warn­er ex­plained: "What I did was to ex­pose what I right­ful­ly con­sid­ered the du­plic­i­tous and disin­gen­u­ous be­hav­iour of one who works in the me­dia and, in this par­tic­u­lar case, the Ex­press news­pa­per.

"We have jus­ti­fi­able rea­son to be con­cerned about the me­dia bias in the coun­try among the con­ven­tion­al me­dia."

A day ear­li­er, the AG, speak­ing at a func­tion in Pe­nal, ques­tioned the Guardian's de­ci­sion to en­gage me as a colum­nist as a re­sult of my hav­ing worked as an ad­vis­er to his im­me­di­ate pre­de­ces­sor John Je­re­mie. He ig­nored the fact that my suc­ces­sor, per­son­al­ly re­cruit­ed by him, now writes for the Guardian and was re­cent­ly pre­sent­ed with a na­tion­al award for his con­tri­bu­tion to jour­nal­ism.

One could ig­nore this as po­lit­i­cal rob­ber talk if the state­ment by the two se­nior mem­bers of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil were not ac­com­pa­nied by on­line threats and poi­soned let­ters aimed at in­tim­i­dat­ing jour­nal­ists in the per­for­mance of their du­ties. In some cas­es, not so veiled threats have been is­sued.

In my case, not on­ly have the AG and a stream of anony­mous blog­gers be­gun to wage a cam­paign against me, but they have al­so tar­get­ed my wife with a li­belous and scur­rilous smear cam­paign. The same al­le­ga­tions have been post­ed on a UNC pro­pa­gan­da Web site ded­i­cat­ed to pro­mot­ing the ac­tiv­i­ties of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and run by a for­mer jour­nal­ist, Jai Paras­ram who was, un­til re­cent­ly, the chair­man of the Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices Lim­it­ed.

What we are see­ing here is a cam­paign led or in­spired by two gov­ern­ment min­is­ters aimed at in­still­ing fear in the me­dia, and in­tim­i­dat­ing jour­nal­ists in the per­for­mance of their du­ties. The words of the Prime Min­is­ter are again not be­ing matched by deeds of the mem­bers of the ad­min­is­tra­tion she leads.

A re­port on the po­lit­i­cal cov­er­age of the lo­cal me­dia was con­duct­ed by the Com­mon­wealth Ob­serv­er Group in 2000 fol­low­ing Mr Pan­day's com­plaints. It found: "The me­dia pro­vid­ed space in news­pa­pers and on the air­waves to all shades of po­lit­i­cal opin­ion.

"They in­ter­viewed can­di­dates and dis­cussed elec­tion is­sues. Opin­ion sur­veys and the cut and thrust of the cam­paign were wide­ly re­port­ed. How­ev­er, we felt that in-depth cov­er­age of the cam­paign poli­cies and is­sues such as crime, the econ­o­my etc, was not as ex­ten­sive as it might have­been." The me­dia should not be in­tim­i­dat­ed as it seeks to cure this de­fi­cien­cy.

(Max­ie Cuffie runs a me­dia con­sul­tan­cy, In­te­grat­ed Me­dia Com­pa­ny Ltd, is an eco­nom­ics grad­u­ate of the UWI and holds an MPA from the Har­vard Kennedy School as a Ma­son Fel­low in Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and Man­age­ment.)


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