Melis­sa Doughty

T&T Guardian ed­i­tor-in-chief Judy Ray­mond said yes­ter­day she was un­aware of any at­tempt to pres­sure or per­suade Guardian ed­i­tors last Sep­tem­ber to pre­vent the pub­li­ca­tion of sto­ries on the Sec­tion 34 is­sue. Speak­ing to is­sues raised by Op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley dur­ing yes­ter­day's sit­ting of the Low­er House, Ray­mond said:"If these al­le­ga­tions are true they are hor­ri­fy­ing, not on­ly for jour­nal­ists but for all right-think­ing cit­i­zens. They must be im­me­di­ate­ly and thor­ough­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the au­thor­i­ties, as well as by the me­dia. I hope and as­sume the leader of the Op­po­si­tion went straight to the po­lice when these e-mails came to light, con­sid­er­ing the se­ri­ous­ness of the threat to a jour­nal­ist and to the work of the me­dia that they im­plied."

Yes­ter­day in Par­lia­ment, Row­ley read out e-mails pur­port­ed­ly re­veal­ing a smear cam­paign against T&T Guardian jour­nal­ist Denyse Renne, who broke the Sec­tion 34 sto­ry last year. "The me­dia are a watch­dog of democ­ra­cy and the im­por­tance of that role is recog­nised in the Con­sti­tu­tion where the free­dom of the press is en­shrined very ear­ly on," Ray­mond said.She said if jour­nal­ists make mis­takes, "there are am­ple le­gal reme­dies avail­able to those in pow­er to re­dress those er­rors. Slan­der, abuse, in­tim­i­da­tion and threats aimed at jour­nal­ists are un­ac­cept­able. "If the e-mails are demon­strat­ed to be gen­uine, then the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al will have been right about one thing: that re­al­ly would be 'in­to dark­ness'," Ray­mond added. Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion (MATT) pres­i­dent Suzanne Shep­pard said in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, "If these things are true we are in a very, very fright­en­ing sit­u­a­tion in this pro­fes­sion."

No Con­fi­dence 2013-05-20

Shep­pard spoke short­ly af­ter Row­ley's pre­sen­ta­tion dur­ing yes­ter­day's sit­ting of the Low­er House, at which a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion was brought against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Shep­pard said: "The fright­en­ing thing about this is that the e-mail threads seem to be so well in sync not on­ly with de­vel­op­ments that have been du­ly re­port­ed over that pe­ri­od, when the Sec­tion 34 mat­ter was un­fold­ing na­tion­al­ly, but al­so it seems to be in line with cer­tain ex­pe­ri­ences we had in the back­ground as me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers, the things that were said, de­vel­op­ments that took place." She said the claims re­vealed a "to­tal un­der­min­ing" of the tenets of a free press."It means, if this is in fact true, what was ex­pressed in terms of up­hold­ing press free­dom was rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from was hap­pen­ing in prac­tice. I cer­tain­ly hope that we are not go­ing down this very dan­ger­ous path in this coun­try," Shep­pard said.She said for the me­dia fra­ter­ni­ty, it should be a "wake-up call," and urged me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers to recom­mit them­selves to ad­her­ing to the best prac­tices of jour­nal­ism and the need for con­stant vig­i­lance in how jour­nal­ists did their jobs."I do not know how much we can do, as me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers, if we are be­ing sub­ject­ed to wire-tap­pings, hack­ings and spy­ing at all lev­els," she said."And this is not the first time it has been al­leged. It has not been the first time mem­bers of the me­dia fra­ter­ni­ty have been iden­ti­fied as tar­gets of these kinds of ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties," she added.

Shep­pard said jour­nal­ists need­ed to pre­pare them­selves for work­ing in a dif­fer­ent kind of me­dia land­scape and to be able to "re­spond pro­fes­sion­al­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly to these at­tacks."She said the as­so­ci­a­tion hoped some of these things were not true but the com­ments could not be ig­nored.Guardian Me­dia Ltd man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Gabriel Faria said he was shocked and dis­turbed by Row­ley's state­ments and was wait­ing to see whether or not they would be con­firmed."Of course the com­pa­ny is con­cerned not on­ly at these al­le­ga­tions that there were at­tempts to in­ter­fere with the ed­i­to­r­i­al process but al­so that con­sid­er­a­tion might have been giv­en to in­tim­i­dat­ing or even phys­i­cal­ly pre­vent­ing a re­porter from do­ing her job."The slo­gan of the T&T Guardian is: 'The guardian of democ­ra­cy.' We take those words very se­ri­ous­ly and we sup­port the right of our ed­i­to­r­i­al staff, both in print at the T&T Guardian and at its sis­ter sta­tion CNC3, to prac­tise re­spon­si­ble jour­nal­ism in the pub­lic in­ter­est and to go about their work free from fear."We would firm­ly re­ject any at­tempt to press Guardian Me­dia Ltd in­to drop­ping a sto­ry for po­lit­i­cal rea­sons or to cov­er up any form of wrong­do­ing."We await swift and de­ci­sive word from the au­thor­i­ties as to the au­then­tic­i­ty of these e-mails," Faria said.