What more appropriate day for a column on the media than All Fools? A daily newspaper and a media organisation have started a campaign of sorts against "government bloggers" who are attacking (ostensibly) women journalists in online fora, like blogs, FB, mail lists and what not.
Attacking women is reprehensible any how you frame it, hence the reason the "attacks" are thusly framed. But perhaps there's another, less hysterical, less hypocritical, less campaigning-for-the-PNM way to frame it. (Because the PNM attacked journalists the old-fashioned way: its PM walked into a radio station with armed cops. Inshan Ishmael was arrested, not threatened. Ask Matt and media mouths what they did in response.)
The media, over the last five years, have gone hard at the Government. A good deal of this has been gratuitous in a way its PNM coverage had not been, and has been symbiotic with a PNM constituency of Facebookers and on- and offline groups. A major node of the media of network was the TnT Mirror, which was published by Maxie Cuffie, now a PNM candidate. (Cuffie was also a columnist for this newspaper till a couple of weeks after his candidacy was announced.) The perception this communication matrix created and fed among the PNM groups is visible in the lyrics of, for example, the Dimanche Gras calypsoes, and yesterday's Express op-eds.
The PP/UNC has responded with its own online and offline media and agents, Facebookers, bloggers, provocateurs. Apparently some of their interlocutors have targeted a few women journalists with accusations of motivations and relationships with the PNM and/or specific people within that grand old cult. The ethics of this seems clear cut. But is it?
The loudest complainers are representatives of media who have carried on their business in almost identical fashion. They've commented upon a former government official's domestic violence issues, the Prime Minister's alleged dipsomania, eagerly reported E-mailgate uncritically, and many more half-facts or outright lies in general. Personalities as much as factoids were and remain dominant.
The Government bloggers have responded in kind, by holding up the lives of media personnel to scrutiny. But when the "government bloggers" do it, apparently, it's "attacking and intimidating journalists" to stop them from the legitimate pursuit of their jobs.
Several issues arise here: the limits of privacy; knowledge of the media's practice; and "freedom of speech."
It seems that the freedom of speech the media routinely abuse and invoke to cover their incompetence and ignorance is being used by others in a similar manner. The fact that "freedom" could be used against the media does not seem to have occurred to them, and they don't seem to like it. This isn't to trivialise the real concern about journalists actually being intimidated, but the bloggers haven't done anything to the journalists the journalists haven't done to other people.
Also of interest here is the issue of privacy: who is and isn't entitled to it. Public figures–politicians for this discussion–are fair game. But what about those who, often using the crudest instruments, pursue politicians and run up their mouths in the public sphere/theatre, without due care and attention to facts? Aren't they public figures too?
The key to these issues is academic and industry knowledge that would enable media people and public to make informed decisions, instead of relying on hysteria. But this knowledge is just not there. In the issues of the limits of free speech and treatment of media personnel, media research provides a kind of panacea. Several tertiary institutions offer degrees up to graduate level, in media, communications, journalism and whatnot. A mandate of such institutions is to produce relevant research for the benefit of the society. Media companies also fund tertiary level programmes. But none of them produce such knowledge, and if they do, they keep it secret.
There is research, but it's scarce. Sanatan and Brown (Talking to Whom? in the 1980s), Ryan and La Guerre (Ethnicity in the Media, in the 1990s), and Courteney Boxill (Is There Racial Prejudice in the Press in Trinidad & Tobago? in the 2000s). All these share some conclusions: incompetence, ethnic bias, highly politicised environments. George John's memoir, Beyond the Front Page, said much the same. (My own effort about a decade ago also raised them, and was labelled "a work of fiction" by a celebrated now-deceased editor.)
More recently, very little, if anything has appeared. There've been fora for discussions on the media. I was invited to participate in one but refused, since the other panelists were not capable of discussing the subject with any but the slightest knowledge. The results were predictable.
The knowledge which seems to be the key missing ingredient in making sense of what's going on with this and other issues resides in two places: in research, and in people. Knowledge can't exist without people able and willing to produce and propagate it. Apropos of that, Sanatan and Brown, George John, and my own analysis, agreed on one thing: the media can't tolerate educated, trained, and curious people.
You might ask what kind of people remain in the media? This might be one of those questions best left hanging. Suffice it to say if the politicians are reprehensible and repulsive, the people who bawl loudest, and instigate the protests, and promote themselves as oracles, are easily the politicians' equal. It is these people who ensure the media remain in their present state.
This fundamental deficiency in the media–the inability to reflect on their own practice, to see their gaping flaws, and to prate about "freedom" when they're challenged, or subjected to their own standards and tactics–and the absence of any fact- and theory-driven discussion of the issues, is a reason the society is being slowly poisoned. This is more important than a few bloggers playing follow-the-media, and exposing some journalists' peccadilloes.