Gail Alexan­der

There's a lot of press free­dom in T&T! That's the pro­nounce­ment of Al­li­son Bethel-Mcken­zie head of the In­ter­na­tion­al Press In­sti­tute. Bethel-Mcken­zie had the last word on T&T's much de­bat­ed press free­dom sta­tus hours be­fore she left T&T on Thurs­day, just ahead of to­day's World Press Free­dom Day. This year's theme is "Safe to Speak: Se­cur­ing Free­dom of Ex­pres­sion in All Me­dia."

Bethel-Mcken­zie was in T&T this week hold­ing talks with the Gov­ern­ment on a range of press free­dom is­sues. This cul­mi­nat­ed with Wednes­day's joint press con­fer­ence in­volv­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, heads of the T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­BA) and As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Me­dia (ACM), con­cern­ing the Gov­ern­ment's move to drop crim­i­nal li­bel from the law books, there­by fur­ther en­hanc­ing T&T's press free­dom.In synch with the WPF's 2013 theme, Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day took a note to Cab­i­net to amend the Li­bel and Defama­tion Act. The change will pre­vent any jour­nal­ist from be­ing crim­i­nal­ly charged and pros­e­cut­ed un­der Sec­tion 9 of the act for ma­li­cious pub­li­ca­tion of any defam­a­to­ry li­bel.

It al­so con­tains safe­guards for cit­i­zens, who will still have le­gal cov­er, via Sec­tion 8 of the law, to pro­tect them­selves against ma­li­cious li­bel when in­for­ma­tion known to be wrong is print­ed.TTP­BA pres­i­dent Ki­ran Ma­haraj on Wednes­day said there had been spec­u­la­tion in re­cent times about "stormy weath­er" for the me­dia, but said "the sun­light has peeped through."Ma­haraj said there are still ma­jor con­cerns which the TTP­BA and part­ners are deal­ing with the Gov­ern­ment on."The gen­e­sis of where we are to­day is proof we can get it done," she had added.

Af­ter Wednes­day's func­tion, Bethel-Mcken­zie was asked her view of T&T's lev­el of press free­dom. She said: "The me­dia here is very vi­brant. I think there's a lot of press free­dom in T&T.""We have some things, some con­cerns that we can work on, but they're not in­sur­mount­able," Bethel-Mcken­zie added.She agreed with the per­cep­tion that the Gov­ern­ment's move to amend the crim­i­nal li­bel law, there­by fur­ther en­hanc­ing press free­dom–even at a time when it was faced with chal­lenges and some crit­i­cism about be­ing less than press friend­ly–con­firmed the ad­min­is­tra­tion's com­mit­ment to a free press.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, list­ing at length T&T's me­dia on Wednes­day, said: "When you con­sid­er this flour­ish­ing me­dia en­vi­ron­ment in a coun­try with a pop­u­la­tion of a mere 1.3 mil­lion, we may very well be among the top in the world on a per capi­ta ba­sis for de­vel­op­ment and ex­pan­sion of the press and me­dia."This is a re­mark­able ac­com­plish­ment, since in many small coun­tries and even some here in the Caribbean, there is not even one es­tab­lished dai­ly news­pa­per," she added.Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there had nev­er been any at­tempt by any T&T gov­ern­ment to in­ter­fere with the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly en­shrined right of press free­dom.

In her dis­course, the PM not­ed the large num­ber of me­dia hous­es in T&T, say­ing there was no pol­i­cy by her Gov­ern­ment to set bound­aries on me­dia own­er­ship, or to squeeze me­dia hous­es out of state ad­ver­tis­ing when those en­ti­ties wrote un­favourable sto­ries about the Gov­ern­ment.TTP­BA's Ma­haraj said there was no ev­i­dence that me­dia hous­es which print sto­ries that are not pleas­ing to Gov­ern­ment do not get state ad­ver­tis­ing.Ma­haraj said that per­cep­tion has ex­ist­ed with every gov­ern­ment, but there is no con­clu­sive ev­i­dence that me­dia hous­es are be­ing "squeezed" out of state ad­ver­tis­ing.Ma­haraj said if the is­sue was raised by mem­bers it will be ad­dressed and the TTP­BA felt com­fort­able to raise it.

ACM's Wes­ley Gib­bings, who said state ad­ver­tis­ing is of­ten used as a means of ei­ther re­ward­ing or pun­ish­ing some me­dia hous­es, al­so said there was no ev­i­dence of this in T&T, but not­ed ACM had me­di­at­ed in cas­es in Guayana and the Cay­man Is­lands on such is­sues.

Both the PM and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan cit­ed the large num­ber of lo­cal me­dia hous­es, say­ing de­ci­sions on ads were based on min­is­te­r­i­al bud­getary con­straints.

Asked about crit­i­cism by some min­is­ters of the me­dia, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there was no pol­i­cy that gov­ern­ment min­is­ters could crit­i­cise the me­dia. She said there might, how­ev­er, be per­son­al ex­pres­sion. The PM, speak­ing about the me­dia in gen­er­al be­fore she was asked that ques­tion, had said: "Ro­bust dis­cus­sions, even dis­agree­ment, crit­i­cism and con­sen­sus, are the blood that flows through the veins of the free me­dia, it must nev­er be mis­tak­en as an at­tack on press free­dom but re­flec­tion and man­i­fes­ta­tion of a free press."

Ram­lo­gan said whis­tle-blow­er leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect jour­nal­ists and oth­er sec­tors was in the off­ing as well in con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sions on the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act.Gib­bings added: "The road to a tru­ly free press is a long and wind­ing road and it has to be en­gaged in­cre­men­tal­ly. Cer­tain­ly, whis­tle-blow­er leg­is­la­tion needs to be put in place.One of the more ur­gent con­cerns, the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act, may pose a threat to the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of sources of sto­ries and that al­so needs to be ad­dressed."Gib­bings said a slew of leg­is­la­tion needs to be im­ple­ment­ed to have the con­di­tions through which press free­dom ex­ists, "... as it's not on­ly a func­tion of what is in place.""What needs to al­so be in place is an en­vi­ron­ment among the wider pop­u­la­tion that fos­ters free­dom of ex­pres­sion. We don't have the most ex­treme threats that are be­ing faced (in oth­er places)," he said.

"Jour­nal­ists aren't be­ing killed here, but there are many sto­ries that die and we need to fo­cus on those sto­ries that die and why they are dy­ing though jour­nal­ists are healthy."

He said sto­ries were "dy­ing" not on­ly be­cause of ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion, "...but you can have an en­vi­ron­ment both from the point of view of those who are gov­erned and from the point of those who gov­ern. It's an oblig­a­tion for all of us".Bethel-Mcken­zie said: "Some­times these things have to be done in­cre­men­tal­ly, no gov­ern­ment will ad­dress every­thing."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added: "There will be many things that need to change and there may be many things we need to do, as long as we live there will al­ways be more to do, but I be­lieve what we've done to­day on re­mov­ing the crim­i­nal li­bel/defama­tion as­pect is a ma­jor step in cre­at­ing the type of me­dia we'd like to have, a very ro­bust press in T&T."

The state of the lo­cal me­dia in­dus­try in­di­cates the need for con­tin­ued di­a­logue and res­o­lu­tion on var­i­ous mat­ters, says the T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­BA).TTP­BA head Ki­ran Ma­haraj said is­sues still to be sort­ed out with part­ners and Gov­ern­ment in­clude the Da­ta Pro­tec­tion Act; gov­ern­ment air time and the ques­tion of its ne­ces­si­ty and rel­e­vance in the cur­rent me­dia en­vi­ron­ment.

Al­so in­com­plete is the Dig­i­tal Tele­vi­sion Tran­si­tion code and the pos­si­ble threat to lo­cal TV broad­cast­ers if a de­fin­i­tive tran­si­tion plan and busi­ness mod­el are im­prop­er­ly im­ple­ment­ed. Work on a broad­cast code and con­tin­ued im­prove­ments in the art of jour­nal­ism through train­ing and de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes are still on­go­ing al­so."Al­though the is­sues men­tioned are not an ex­haus­tive list, these are the ma­jor on­go­ing con­cerns in our in­dus­try, which the TTP­BA has been fever­ish­ly ad­dress­ing," she said.Ma­haraj al­so ex­pressed the TTP­BA's ap­pre­ci­a­tion to the Gov­ern­ment for keep­ing its promise of a year ago with re­spect to the Li­bel and Defama­tion Act. She'd added: "TTP­BA hopes that this is a sign of many good things to come."

Ma­haraj said World Press Free­dom Day "serves as a re­minder to gov­ern­ments of the need to re­spect their com­mit­ment to press free­dom and is al­so a day of re­flec­tion among me­dia pro­fes­sion­als about is­sues of press free­dom and pro­fes­sion­al ethics."She added: "De­spite the dai­ly chal­lenges and seem­ing for­ay of faux pas with­in re­cent times, we're proud to serve our pub­lic."On an­oth­er lev­el, ACM's Gib­bings said the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T has "very se­ri­ous or­gan­i­sa­tion­al is­sues" and has not been able to play the role it ought to be play­ing in the way it should.

De­scrib­ing MATT as "dys­func­tion­al," he said the ACM was there to pick up the slack.In re­sponse to this yes­ter­day, MATT head Suzanne Shep­pard said: "MATT does have is­sues, main­ly stem­ming from the fact that on­ly a hand­ful of peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly get in­volved in the as­so­ci­a­tion. We need more me­dia work­ers to come for­ward and of­fer their ser­vices for the ex­ec­u­tive."At MATT's last AGM in March we man­aged to have a quo­rum, but not enough peo­ple were pre­pared to run for po­si­tions on the ex­ec­u­tive, so we have to de­fer the elec­tions."She added: "While peo­ple look to MATT when a se­ri­ous is­sue aris­es that im­pacts on the pro­fes­sion, many don't see them­selves as re­al­ly be­ing part of MATT. This is a prob­lem we have faced for most of the as­so­ci­a­tion's ex­is­tence. On­ly a hand­ful turn out for meet­ings and oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties, un­for­tu­nate­ly."

T&T's ME­DIA

Eight TV broad­cast­ing sta­tions.

One TV broad­cast ser­vice via ca­ble

Nine sub­scrip­tion TV broad­cast­ers

37 FM ra­dio broad­cast­ers, some com­pa­nies own­ing more than one ra­dio sta­tion

1 AM ra­dio broad­cast­er

Three na­tion­al dai­ly news­pa­pers

Ten week­ly and spe­cial­i­ty news­pa­pers

One To­ba­go news­pa­per

Two land­line providers

7 In­ter­net providers

Bur­geon­ing so­cial me­dia and strong­ly grow­ing cy­ber com­mu­ni­ty

Grow­ing num­ber of ra­dio and TV talk shows.