The Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion (Matt) has called for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to threats against jour­nal­ists by mem­bers of the De­fence Force on Thurs­day.In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Matt said the ac­tion of mem­bers of the De­fence Force on Thurs­day when they sought to threat­en and in­tim­i­date jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing a le­git­i­mate sto­ry in a pub­lic space, in Port-of-Spain, was alarm­ing."If the claim is ac­cu­rate, and we have no doubt it is, that the lives of jour­nal­ists were threat­ened by a sol­dier point­ing a gun at them, then it must be crim­i­nal­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed and those cul­pa­ble face the full ex­tent of the law," the as­so­ci­a­tion said.

Law en­force­ment of­fi­cers must be made to clear­ly un­der­stand the scope of their pow­ers and the role of the me­dia, it stressed."Matt can­not take this mat­ter light­ly, giv­en the con­tin­u­ing de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of re­la­tions be­tween law en­force­ment and cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties in Trinidad, and the in­creas­ing num­ber of re­ports by jour­nal­ists fear­ful of cov­er­ing the news."Matt ex­pects Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith and the se­niors with­in the Po­lice Ser­vice and De­fence Force will in­ves­ti­gate this lat­est re­port and act im­me­di­ate­ly, as jour­nal­ists must be free from fear in car­ry­ing out their jour­nal­is­tic du­ties."Matt al­so ad­vised all jour­nal­ists to take the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions when in the field, and said me­dia hous­es should en­sure the se­cu­ri­ty of their staff.