World press freedom day (May 3) passed here with the usual platitudes and worse from MATT and the government, but I don't recall any significant mention of the Texas Muhammad cartoon competition killings the day after (May 4).
An organisation called the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), headed by Pamela Geller, organised a competition to find the best cartoon depiction of the Prophet Muhammad. Naturally, and especially after the Charlie Hebdo massacre early this year, this was provocative if not downright enraging to Muslims, whose religion prohibits images of its prophet. Two Muslims armed themselves and went to remonstrate with the AFDI, and were killed by police.
The killings ignited a predictable debate on the US constitutional guarantee of free speech, its limits and its distinction from hate speech. Last week's Newsweek magazine described the AFDI and its leader thusly: "Pamela Geller, a self-appointed 'expert' on Islamic terrorism and jihad, who makes a lucrative living pandering Islamophobic clich�s that many commentators have analogised to hate speech." And it's that final point that brought it to Trinidad, as it were.
The self-appointed clich�-mongering expert syndrome affects many areas of Trini national life, but media in particular. To continue from the theme of last week (to introduce fundamental elements of media studies to the public), much of the discussion of free speech in Trinidad and Tobago comes from a few sources whose capacity to make these pronouncements is dubious at the best of times. The best example is MATT and the various "personalities" that speak for it, and the various almost ad hoc organisations that materialise from time to time.
Because of the incessant repetition of a few slogans, the term "press freedom," as a stock response to criticism of media practice, has become meaningless to the point of stifling any intelligent debate or discussion beyond platitudes and clich�s. For example, no statistics exist on media practice, accuracy, or even public opinion of media.
The consequences include a distrust of the media among the public at large; a herd instinct among the media, a tendency to close ranks and climb on a high horse at criticism; and a general ignorance or apathy to the almost esoteric notion of the public good anywhere. Put another way: incompetence, apathy, and malevolence pumped into the public sphere through the media all get a pass under the rubric of the "free press" which is used interchangeably with "free speech."
The use of the notion of free speech to restrict media content isn't a local phenomenon. It's the subject of a classic of media studies, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media (1994). Consent proposes that much of what passes as news in US media is severely limited in terms of what is reported, and is the product of a few familiar forces: concentrated media ownership; the interconnection of money, political and social power; and convenient "bogeyman" issues to distract the population. These days in the US the bogeyman is terrorism, and a near perfect illustration of manufacturing consent can be found in a decade of reportage on war on Iraq. Consent's thesis applies to Trinidad, but the absence of any debate, or work like Herman and Chomsky's, has created a distrust of official information, and the attitude that the truth must be contrary to the official position. This attitude dovetails with a mentality from the pre- and post-independence periods, when the foil to the colonial/business elite's control of the media was calypso, which was in a sense an alternative press.
Calypso in the past was used to taunt the powerful, and occasionally provide information officialdom would not. Thus free speech is reflexively invoked in defending the right of calypsonians today.
Unfortunately today, calypso's practice is indistinguishable from the mainstream media: it's used exclusively as an ethnic political instrument and cultivates an almost subversive "resistance" to anything that opposes its version of the truth.
The resistance, fed by the "free speech" constitutional guarantee, nurtures a pervasive social anarchism. Thanks to talk radio it has encouraged a frightening and destructive amount of ole talk and hate speech to pass into the public sphere, and individual minds, and promote the absence of authority, or reliable sources.
But free speech isn't an isolated phenomenon. Like polluted food or water, hate speech poisons and causes a general malaise of mistrust and uncertainty. This might sound abstract, but there is actually a way of measuring the effects of this mistrust, and relating it to the general well-being of society. The term is "social capital," and it applies to the qualities of a society that creates trust, social bonds and cooperation.
According to a 2006 World Bank study: "Where is the Wealth of Nations," Trinidad, (like Guyana) had the lowest proportion of social capital (intangible wealth) in the region. The coupling with Guyana gives a hint as to why the numbers are so low. In a fractured society like ours, the media's role in creating and maintaining trust by being impartial, by using its guaranteed free speech honestly, is critical.
This sounds like a suggestion that the media have a responsibility to foster national unity. As seductive as that sounds, what they have is the responsibility to do their jobs.
I don't think, given the high degree of symbiosis between media and political and ethnic "movements" or lobbies, it's a revelation to say they're failing miserably, and hide behind "freedom" when crucial questions like competence, bias, and accountability arise.
In any discussion of press freedom, these questions must be front and centre. Unfortunately, as hard data are absent, the answers can only be ole talk and platitude.