Mr chair­man, my first and very plea­sur­able task is to warm­ly con­grat­u­late Costaatt on yet an­oth­er mile­stone, its sig­nif­i­cant suc­cess­es and, more par­tic­u­lar­ly, its im­pres­sive growth in these two most re­cent years. To have in­creased your en­rol­ment from 5,000 to over 9,600 stu­dents be­tween Sep­tem­ber 2008 and Sep­tem­ber 2010, is an out­stand­ing per­for­mance by any yard­stick and speaks vol­umes about the qual­i­ty of your lead­er­ship.

I am, there­fore, great­ly ho­n­oured, Mr chair­man, to be for­mal­ly iden­ti­fied with Costaatt's School of Jour­nal­ism and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies. You car­ry my name and I am proud of that. But, in my heart, I share that ho­n­our with the out­stand­ing and ded­i­cat­ed men and women I met on Feb­ru­ary 1, 1969. On that day, I joined the Trinidad Ex­press news­pa­pers as its man­ag­ing di­rec­tor; a com­pa­ny which had com­menced op­er­a­tions two years ear­li­er but which, hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced very heavy loss­es, was at the point of clo­sure. Why did I, in my mid-30s, join the Ex­press which was in se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ty? Walk­ing away from a sinecure; a po­si­tion that was one of the bet­ter re­ward­ed at that time with gen­er­ous perks and al­lowances in­clud­ing an Austin Princess mo­tor­car and liv­er­ied chauf­feur.

I sup­pose I was al­so a lit­tle crazy. But, we lived an ex­tra­or­di­nary ad­ven­ture. It be­gan with a meet­ing in Trinidad be­tween Ce­cil King, own­er of the Trinidad Mir­ror and many oth­er news­pa­pers through­out the world, and Lord Thomp­son, then own­er of the Trinidad Guardian and more than 100 oth­er news­pa­pers. Thomp­son be­came in­fa­mous through­out the news­pa­per world for hav­ing told his ed­i­tors that his in­ter­est was in mak­ing mon­ey and he em­pha­sised that con­tro­ver­sy with gov­ern­ments or any­one else must not in­ter­fere with that ob­jec­tive. King and Thomp­son de­cid­ed on how they could most ef­fec­tive­ly share the mar­kets in which they were com­pet­ing. The Trinidad Mir­ror was the im­me­di­ate ca­su­al­ty and the news­pa­per was closed down the next day.

Two hun­dred em­ploy­ees were thrown on the bread­line and street demon­stra­tions fol­lowed. Busi­ness­man Ver­non Charles rose to the oc­ca­sion and raised enough mon­ey to buy a sec­ond-hand press. He al­so at­tract­ed a body of the more en­light­ened busi­ness and pro­fes­sion­al lead­ers of the day to serve on the com­pa­ny's board of di­rec­tors. Men who waived di­rec­tors' fees and gave per­son­al guar­an­tees to the bank to keep the pa­per go­ing; men who un­der­stood the crit­i­cal im­por­tance of build­ing a bet­ter in­formed so­ci­ety and a free and in­de­pen­dent press...and that was the im­prob­a­ble be­gin­ning of the Ex­press.

Shaped by a colo­nial cul­ture; bol­stered by the courage of youth; and com­mit­ted to a vi­sion that de­fied rea­son and fear, the Ex­press would be­come a sym­bol of hope at a time of much hope­less­ness. Doors which had been adroit­ly closed were opened and step by step the Ex­press took on the es­tab­lish­ment and the for­mer un­touch­ables in the so­ci­ety. It kept pace with the sus­pi­cions and tri­umphs of In­de­pen­dence and shared its high hopes. But most im­por­tant­ly, it al­ways stood up against threats to the or­dered de­vel­op­ment of our coun­try. I am de­light­ed to see in our au­di­ence those who trav­elled that road with me from the ear­li­est days. But that is now his­to­ry.

To­day we cel­e­brate the for­mal open­ing of a new chap­ter in Caribbean Jour­nal­ism which will of­fer a range of Bach­e­lor and As­so­ciate De­grees as well as Diplo­ma and Cer­tifi­cate Pro­grammes. It is im­por­tant that those of you who pre­pare to em­bark on ca­reers in jour­nal­ism, should be­come fa­mil­iar with events which have pre­ced­ed you and per­haps even more im­por­tant­ly, the Amend­ed Ar­ti­cle 19 of the Uni­ver­sal De­c­la­ra­tion of Hu­man Rights which has sig­nalled to the World that, "Every­one has a right to free­dom of opin­ion and ex­pres­sion. That right in­cludes the free­dom to hold opin­ions with­out in­ter­fer­ence and to seek, re­ceive and im­part in­for­ma­tion and ideas through any me­dia and re­gard­less of fron­tiers."

These are pow­er­ful words which must not be mis­un­der­stood to mean that the un­der­ly­ing ten­sions and even con­flict be­tween the me­dia and gov­ern­ments will in time dis­ap­pear. That would be a sad day for the democ­ra­cies of this world for with­in these ten­sions run the pow­er­ful threads of ac­count­abil­i­ty. The pro­grammes and train­ing which will now be avail­able to as­pir­ing jour­nal­ists are de­signed to lift stan­dards through­out the me­dia, de­vel­op the lev­els of jour­nal­ism to which we have long as­pired and, if I may bor­row an ex­tract from the Cha­pul­te­pec De­c­la­ra­tion: "To as­sist our so­ci­eties in bet­ter un­der­stand­ing that free so­ci­eties thrive on­ly through free ex­pres­sion and the ex­change of ideas. The search for and the dis­sem­i­na­tion of in­for­ma­tion. The abil­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate and ques­tion, to agree and dis­agree, to con­verse and con­front, to pub­lish and broad­cast."

In pur­su­ing this mis­sion the re­al­i­ty is that free and in­de­pen­dent me­dia are fre­quent­ly provoca­tive and some­times sen­sa­tion­al. They can make nui­sances of them­selves, par­tic­u­lar­ly when they un­earth in­for­ma­tion that some would pre­fer hid­den. But that is the me­dia's job and it has no busi­ness try­ing to win pop­u­lar­i­ty con­tests. So, there is a price to pay for ef­fec­tive me­dia hous­es are forced in­to ad­ver­sar­i­al re­la­tion­ships with all the im­por­tant pow­er cen­tres at one time or an­oth­er. Un­for­tu­nate...but there is no oth­er way.

Jour­nal­ism is a de­mand­ing mis­tress and those who com­mit to this pro­fes­sion must con­stant­ly bear in mind that the sin­gle, most im­por­tant re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the me­dia in coun­tries such as ours is to un­cov­er the facts and as­sist in the de­vel­op­ment of an alert, vig­or­ous and well-in­formed pub­lic opin­ion. Wher­ev­er this ex­ists, so­ci­eties de­vel­op a sense of fair play and is­sues are re­solved with­in a prin­ci­pled frame­work. In­sti­tu­tions grow strong and the rule of law is re­spect­ed.

Al­ready in the Caribbean's short his­to­ry, press free­dom has great­ly in­flu­enced de­vel­op­ments and over­come chal­lenges which se­ri­ous­ly threat­ened the open so­ci­ety in which we now live and the free­doms we en­joy. Hope­ful­ly you will en­counter some of these in your class­rooms. But a quick Caribbean snap­shot re­veals that it was the free press that made it pos­si­ble to de­fy Guyana's Pres­i­dent Burn­ham and Grena­da's Prime Min­is­ter Bish­op's as­pi­ra­tions to ex­pand the Caribbean in­to a so­cial­ist basin. It stopped an at­tempt to have the Caribbean News Agency (CANA) func­tion as a pro­pa­gan­da arm of Caribbean gov­ern­ments by ex­pos­ing Burn­ham's crude con­spir­a­cy with his sta­tion man­ag­er from Guyana to make him the first chair­man of CANA.

In Ja­maica, the Dai­ly Glean­er played an his­toric role in turn­ing the tide of pub­lic opin­ion against the gov­ern­ment in pow­er which was mov­ing in­creas­ing­ly in­to the sphere of Cuban/So­vi­et in­flu­ence. In Bar­ba­dos, the Na­tion news­pa­per, when still a week­ly, avert­ed the pur­chase of the Ad­vo­cate, then the on­ly dai­ly news­pa­per, by the gov­ern­ment. They broke the sto­ry on the eve of the Cab­i­net meet­ing called to ap­prove the pur­chase and every­one in the Cab­i­net ran for cov­er. To­day, in­stead of a gov­ern­ment-owned pro­pa­gan­da ma­chine, the peo­ple of Bar­ba­dos en­joy two dai­ly, in­de­pen­dent­ly owned news­pa­pers.

Press free­dom forced the Dra­con­ian Pub­lic Or­der Act in Trinidad and To­ba­go to be re­scind­ed. Twen­ty sev­en years lat­er, when the gov­ern­ment changed and the for­mer Op­po­si­tion had be­come the sit­ting gov­ern­ment, they in turn were made to back away from a Green Pa­per tar­get­ed at con­trol­ling the me­dia. On an on­go­ing ba­sis the free me­dia have ex­posed cor­rup­tion, dou­ble stan­dards and abus­es of pow­er where they have oc­curred. The Trinidad and To­ba­go Head of State has been forced to apol­o­gise to the na­tion. The chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion has been em­bar­rassed in­to re­sign­ing from of­fice. The chair­man of Ude­cott and his board of di­rec­tors were ex­posed lead­ing to their dis­missal. It has ex­posed an air­port scan­dal lead­ing to jail sen­tences, and charges are still in court against a for­mer prime min­is­ter and a min­is­ter of fi­nance.

It has ex­plod­ed the scan­dalous cor­po­rate mis­man­age­ment and im­pro­pri­ety of CLI­CO whose col­lapse has done un­told dam­age to Caribbean economies and stock­hold­ers, and even now me­dia con­tin­ue to play an im­por­tant role in keep­ing the rapid­ly age­ing, but still youth­ful Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go on its toes: a Gov­ern­ment, I might add, which has shown com­mend­able courage in tack­ling ma­jor is­sues, even as it main­tains an ap­petite for mak­ing un­forced er­rors. So, press free­dom is alive and vig­or­ous in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Costaatt's en­light­ened de­ci­sion to pro­vide you with a Bach­e­lor's De­gree Pro­gramme in Jour­nal­ism is a long over­due ini­tia­tive. It is ap­pro­pri­ate that this co­in­cides with the eve of our 50th an­niver­sary as an in­de­pen­dent coun­try for it sig­nals a new se­ri­ous­ness about cor­rect­ing dis­tort­ed pri­or­i­ties.

To­day's jour­nal­ist must shape and deep­en pub­lic opin­ion while main­tain­ing high stan­dards and prin­ci­pled be­hav­iour. These are the in­escapable re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the true pro­fes­sion­al. What­ev­er the com­pli­ca­tions or sen­si­tiv­i­ty, the pro­fes­sion­al must be guid­ed by bal­ance and ob­jec­tiv­i­ty and this must be re­flect­ed in cov­er­age of the sto­ry...but the bot­tom line is that the jour­nal­ist must dig. To em­pha­sise the point, let us re­view the re­cent re­port that two ma­jor gan­ja fields were re­cent­ly de­stroyed by a Po­lice/Army op­er­a­tion. We were told that an es­ti­mat­ed 115,000 ful­ly grown mar­i­jua­na trees, 300 seedlings and 80 ki­los of cured mar­i­jua­na, all val­ued at $115K were burnt and de­stroyed.

This must have been a very large area and fire; 115,000 is a large num­ber to ac­cu­rate­ly es­ti­mate. Were these trees count­ed? Why would the Ex­press car­ry so sig­nif­i­cant a sto­ry, oc­cu­py­ing less than eight inch­es of sin­gle col­umn space, and tuck the sto­ry in the low­er right hand cor­ner on Page 8. Did the news­room have prob­lems with its ac­cu­ra­cy? One raid fol­low­ing the oth­er, days apart, with the state of emer­gency an­nounce­ment com­ing in the mid­dle-no one on the site-why did they not mount a sur­veil­lance team to wait it out un­til the grow­ers re­turned to col­lect the cured mar­i­jua­na. Was it too much to ex­pect that it might have led to catch­ing them in the act with guns as well.

Did any­one check the lo­ca­tion to con­firm that such a large fire took place? There may be en­tire­ly plau­si­ble an­swers to all these ques­tions...but they should have been test­ed. Pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ists test their in­for­ma­tion and sources. They get be­hind the sto­ry and fre­quent­ly find the re­al sto­ry. Then there is the call to end the state of emer­gency. An op­er­a­tion which was bad­ly man­aged from the out­set by giv­ing ad­vance no­tice. Many guns could have been hid­den in those in­ter­ven­ing hours. But when for the first time gun­men who were ter­ror­is­ing the coun­try are put on the run and kept too busy to kill in­no­cent peo­ple, and this re­sults in a 70 per cent re­duc­tion in deaths, seiz­ing more than 750 mil­lion dol­lars worth of drugs, 12,353 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion, 365 firearms (mul­ti­ply each firearm by two deaths a year and this could mean sav­ing 730 lives).

Add to this 769 on se­ri­ous charges, 745 on drug re­lat­ed charges, 77 gang lead­ers charged, 57 homi­cide charges and 50 il­le­gal im­mi­grants from dif­fer­ent parts of the world who could be up to all types of mis­chief. These are not the re­sults of fail­ure. Crit­i­cise the bad man­age­ment and ex­cess­es by all means. But not with ar­gu­ments, as some have done, that go dan­ger­ous­ly close to ro­man­ti­cis­ing peo­ple who kill mind­less­ly....and would de­stroy us all. Give the state of emer­gency the time to com­plete the job it has start­ed and fi­nal­ly break the back of this ter­ri­ble prob­lem.

But be­fore I end, I would al­so like to re­fer to the elec­tron­ic me­dia sec­tion of your de­gree pro­gramme. Some 12 years or so ago, I was re­turn­ing on a fight from New York and was seat­ed next to a man, thir­ty­ish, who was speak­ing loud­ly on a cell­phone in a lan­guage that was al­most im­pos­si­ble to un­der­stand. For­tu­nate­ly the con­ver­sa­tion end­ed af­ter five min­utes or so. He turned to me and to my pleas­ant sur­prise, said: "Hel­lo, Mr Gor­don" in a most cor­dial man­ner. Lat­er in the flight, while chat­ting with him in Eng­lish, I dis­cov­ered that he was an en­gi­neer with a ma­jor US air­line and that he trav­elled every week on in­spec­tion vis­its to dif­fer­ent states. He was al­so a Trinida­di­an. I asked him why he was speak­ing in such an id­iom when I board­ed the air­craft. Very earnest­ly he told me that if he spoke oth­er­wise to his friends, and he iden­ti­fied the area in Trinidad where he for­mer­ly lived, they would ac­cuse him of big-in up, and sell­ing out.

So, here was an am­bi­tious young man who had over­come the con­sid­er­able odds to carve out a good life for him­self as a pro­fes­sion­al in the Unit­ed States but who now had to vir­tu­al­ly apol­o­gise for his suc­cess to his boy­hood friends. In­ci­den­tal­ly, be­fore he was made an In­spec­tor he had to take spe­cial lessons in Eng­lish/Amer­i­can so he could be un­der­stood by the peo­ple he was in­spect­ing. This un­for­tu­nate sto­ry is a sad com­men­tary on the lev­el to which speech has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed amongst many of our young peo­ple through­out the length and breadth of this coun­try. The wide­spread abuse of lan­guage ex­tends to green verbs, ig­nor­ing word end­ings, elim­i­nat­ing "The from the lan­guage and re­plac­ing it with "dee" and every oth­er form of butch­ery to the lan­guage you can imag­ine.

So, lift­ing the lev­els of ed­u­ca­tion of stu­dents is one thing. Per­mit­ting the qual­i­ty of the lan­guage they speak to be­come in­creas­ing­ly un­in­tel­li­gi­ble is an­oth­er. But that dis­cus­sion is for an­oth­er time. I wish to em­pha­sise the im­por­tance of stan­dards in speech dic­tion and de­liv­ery for the ex­ist­ing norms are a poor re­flec­tion on our coun­try and are counter-pro­duc­tive in a glob­al world. What we hear on ra­dio and tele­vi­sion con­tributes sig­nif­i­cant­ly to that con­di­tion. This de­te­ri­o­rat­ing pat­tern must be cor­rect­ed and Costaatt's new ini­tia­tive which we cel­e­brate to­day is an ex­cel­lent op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so. In oth­er words, grad­u­ates in Voice Me­dia-Ra­dio and Tele­vi­sion should be re­quired to at­tain an ac­cept­able lev­el of com­pe­tence in speech and de­liv­ery.

A Costaatt grad­u­ate in elec­tron­ic me­dia should be an iden­ti­fi­able stan­dard to which oth­ers as­pire. This could be the first step to­wards es­tab­lish­ing a se­ri­ous stan­dard in Voice and Tele­vi­sion Me­dia, and could be an­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant Costaatt con­tri­bu­tion to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. So, thank you again, Mr chair­man for the ho­n­our you do me to­day and con­tin­ued suc­cess to your out­stand­ing in­sti­tu­tion. I ac­cept it with pride on be­half of those whose guid­ance and sup­port over the years have made pos­si­ble what­ev­er con­tri­bu­tion I may be thought to have made.

In con­grat­u­lat­ing those of you now pur­su­ing your de­gree pro­gramme, may I re­mind you, that achieve­ment is not an end in it­self; it is a process, a state of mind that is on­go­ing, which is ever grap­pling with the next hur­dle. Ma­te­r­i­al and aca­d­e­m­ic ac­com­plish­ments are nec­es­sary but ul­ti­mate suc­cess de­pends up­on the fam­i­ly you love, the peo­ple you help and how well you serve your God and your coun­try. You are for­tu­nate in your choice of ca­reer. It is one of the most ex­cit­ing in the world.