Last Thurs­day, Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ja­mal Mo­hammed apol­o­gised for the e-mail he sent to TV6 chid­ing the me­dia house for what he de­scribed as a "clear bias." His apol­o­gy was un­usu­al. Mr Mo­hammed was con­cerned about hav­ing "hurt any­one or done any­thing to make any­one un­com­fort­able in any way," but couldn't seem to un­der­stand what his 600-word e-mail sig­ni­fied, com­ing from the min­is­ter charged with the Gov­ern­ment's pub­lic-re­la­tions port­fo­lio.

To clar­i­fy the is­sue, it's sim­ply not pos­si­ble for Mr Mo­hammed, who had no dis­cernible his­to­ry of com­ment­ing on me­dia mat­ters while he was a pri­vate cit­i­zen, to ex­pect that his pri­vate opin­ion on me­dia prac­tice can be di­vorced from his pub­lic role. His let­ter has done more than let the pub­lic know how he feels about the me­dia's re­port­ing on mat­ters of gov­er­nance; it al­so sug­gests that he may still need to come to grips with the grav­i­tas of his sub­stan­tive po­si­tion.

The e-mail was de­scribed as a "spur of the mo­ment" no­tion, but the min­is­ter will now find it dif­fi­cult to per­suade me­dia pro­fes­sion­als with his more con­sid­ered plead­ings of sup­port for a free press. Nowhere in his let­ter or in his sub­se­quent state­ments is there ev­i­dence of any un­der­stand­ing of the me­dia's role in speak­ing truth to pow­er and its role in pro­vid­ing, through its re­port­ing, an in­ter­rog­a­tive coun­ter­bal­ance to gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ty and pro­pa­gan­da.

This re­spon­si­bil­i­ty holds true re­gard­less of the par­ty in pow­er, and ca­reer me­dia pro­fes­sion­als are well aware that the con­flicts that so trou­ble Mr Mo­hammed are a con­se­quence of that on­go­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

The Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions has had con­cerns about in­stru­ments that en­cour­age the free flow of in­for­ma­tion and dis­cus­sion al­most from the be­gin­ning of his ap­point­ment in his role. In June, he ex­pressed con­cern over the per­va­sive­ness of so­cial me­dia net­works, and an­nounced that these ser­vices would be among his three pri­or­i­ties in of­fice.

"As a gov­ern­ment we must be aware of what's hap­pen­ing around the world con­cern­ing so­cial net­work­ing sites and the in­flu­ence it's hav­ing on peo­ple and af­fect­ing our youths," the new­ly ap­point­ed min­is­ter said.

Mr Mo­hammed nev­er ar­tic­u­lat­ed ex­act­ly what so­cial me­dia threats he wished to mon­i­tor, but it is to be hoped that the lu­bri­ca­tion of free speech and the shar­ing of ideas are not among them. In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, Mr Mo­hammed con­tin­ued to in­sist, with­out spe­cif­ic ex­am­ple, that sto­ries were be­ing pub­lished with­out "al­low­ing the oth­er side to be pre­sent­ed."

The min­is­ter ac­cused the OCM group of re­port­ing com­ments from the op­po­si­tion, but will he com­mit to en­sur­ing that when gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives are con­tact­ed that a time­ly state­ment will be forth­com­ing from them? That's cer­tain­ly some­thing that could be de­scribed as one of his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and it is not some­thing that gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and of­fi­cials are al­ways ea­ger to do.

Has the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter spo­ken with his Cab­i­net col­leagues about their in­cli­na­tion to threat­en jour­nal­ists do­ing their work? Or sought to dis­cour­age the par­ty's sup­port­ers, some said to be paid for this work, who write and cir­cu­late slan­der­ous e-mails and pop­u­late me­dia Web sites with ag­gres­sive­ly par­ti­san com­ments?

In its state­ment on the mat­ter, the T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion not­ed: "We seem to be in a web of con­flict with­out a clear de­f­i­n­i­tion of Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion with re­spect to the me­dia and free­dom of the press." That re­la­tion­ship has been chal­lenged so of­ten dur­ing the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship's time in gov­ern­ment that the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter should feel moved to com­mit more than just words in sup­port of a free press.

The min­is­ter has is­sued a state­ment an­nounc­ing his in­ten­tion to meet with the TTP­BA and the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion. That would be an ex­cel­lent op­por­tu­ni­ty to clar­i­fy an more sen­si­ble code of en­gage­ment for gov­ern­ment min­is­ters to fol­low in their re­la­tion­ship with the work­ing me­dia.