The ex­ec­u­tive of the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T re­ceived a boost for its mem­ber­ship last week, when Guardian Me­dia pre­sent­ed its ex­ec­u­tive with a do­na­tion of 20 copies of News­room Law: A Le­gal Guide for Com­mon­wealth Caribbean Jour­nal­ists, a book writ­ten by for­mer jour­nal­ist now judge, Jus­tice Kathy Ann Wa­ter­man-Latchoo.

Guardian Me­dia man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Dr Kar­ri­an Hep­burn Mal­colm said she was de­light­ed to be able to con­tribute the copies of Jus­tice Wa­ter­man-Latchoo’s le­gal guide for jour­nal­ists to MATT ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Ira Math­ur (pres­i­dent), Mark Lyn­der­say (trea­sur­er) and Robert Tay­lor (floor mem­ber).

“As the old­est dai­ly news­pa­per in T&T and op­er­at­ing with the mot­to ‘Guardian of Democ­ra­cy’ as pub­lish­ers, we have con­sis­tent­ly un­der­stood that me­dia own­ers’ re­spon­si­bil­i­ties go way be­yond those of any oth­er cor­po­rate cit­i­zen,” Hep­burn Mal­colm said.

“We know that to sup­port a jour­nal­ist is to strength­en democ­ra­cy. We trust these books by a for­mer jour­nal­ist and the em­i­nent Jus­tice will con­tribute to greater ex­cel­lence in jour­nal­ism in this coun­try.”

Jour­nal­ists in T&T, as watch­dogs of democ­ra­cy, have long been sub­ject to lit­i­ga­tion and threats of li­bel and defama­tion by those they hold to ac­count.

The MATT ex­ec­u­tive said they be­lieve that the strongest de­fence against the po­ten­tial re­stric­tions of press free­doms and self-cen­sor­ship is to be armed with a bet­ter knowl­edge of the law.

On March 5, MATT host­ed an open dis­cus­sion on Me­dia and the Law which was wide­ly at­tend­ed by the mem­ber­ship. Jus­tice Wa­ter­man-Latchoo was the keynote speak­er at that event and pro­vid­ed vi­tal in­for­ma­tion to guide the me­dia on op­er­at­ing less en­cum­bered in do­ing the work of the Fourth Es­tate.

The MATT said they were grate­ful to Guardian Me­dia for 20 copies of the book, which will be dis­trib­uted on a first-come, first-serve ba­sis.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said it al­so ap­pre­ci­at­ed and ac­knowl­edged the sup­port of the Me­dia In­sti­tute of the Caribbean (MIC), which has do­nat­ed a fur­ther ten books. The T&T Ex­press has al­so of­fered to sup­port this ef­fort with an as yet un­de­cid­ed sum of books and the as­so­ci­a­tion is look­ing for­ward to de­liv­er­ing them on be­half of its jour­nal­ists.

The me­dia body said it looks for­ward to the sup­port of more cor­po­rate spon­sors and civic cit­i­zens in pur­su­ing its ul­ti­mate goal of en­sur­ing that every work­ing jour­nal­ist in this coun­try has a copy of this book.

MATT al­so ac­knowl­edged the team ef­fort of the ex­ec­u­tive in this ven­ture, among them James Saun­ders (floor mem­ber), Kan­dace Jack­son (vice-pres­i­dent), Nicole Ro­many (sec­re­tary) and Clay­ton Clarke (as­sis­tant sec­re­tary).