The Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MATT) has hit back at Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith for crit­i­cis­ing the me­dia for in­ter­view­ing sus­pect­ed gang lead­ers and mem­bers dur­ing the po­lice’s re­cent Red Alert op­er­a­tions.

In a re­lease is­sued last evening, MATT not­ed that the du­ty of all jour­nal­ists is to re­port all sides of a sto­ry, not just se­lect­ed view­points.

“While the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Gary Grif­fith, is free to ex­press his opin­ion on how jour­nal­ists con­duct their du­ties, MATT would like to re­mind the CoP that free­dom of the press is a cor­ner­stone of our democ­ra­cy,” MATT said.

“Mr Grif­fith has re­peat­ed­ly used his right to free­dom of speech to sar­cas­ti­cal­ly re­fer to me­dia hous­es and jour­nal­ists he does not agree with. To the Com­mis­sion­er, we say it is your right to ques­tion any re­port in the print and broad­cast me­dia. How­ev­er, MATT sug­gests the Com­mis­sion­er be more tem­per­ate in his choice of words so as not to cre­ate the im­pres­sion he is not in sup­port of a free press.”

MATT re­mind­ed Grif­fith that he is not at war with the me­dia, nor is the me­dia at war with him or the po­lice ser­vice.

“We sup­port the good work of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and will con­tin­ue to re­port on their fight against crime. Like­wise, the jour­nal­ists of Trinidad and To­ba­go will con­tin­ue to high­light the views of per­sons who may dis­agree with the man­ner in which po­lice con­duct their du­ties.”

MATT al­so re­mind­ed re­porters and jour­nal­ists of the need to be fair and bal­anced in all re­port­ing.

MATT’s com­ment came af­ter Grif­fith, dur­ing CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew, de­scribed the me­dia’s in­ter­view­ing of sus­pect­ed gang lead­ers and mem­bers as a glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the gang men­tal­i­ty.

“I am cer­tain the pop­u­la­tion will al­so be in­ter­est­ed in the sto­ries of those who may have been di­rect­ly im­pact­ed by nu­mer­ous lives lost to sense­less gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence —or on the oth­er side, those who ac­tu­al­ly felt a de­gree of safe­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in these ‘hotspot’ ar­eas, for the days whilst a few per­sons of in­ter­est were pulled in for ques­tion­ing; let’s hear their sto­ries as well,” Grif­fith said.

“As much as I ap­pre­ci­ate that every sec­tor has their jobs to do, at some point we must un­der­stand that giv­ing promi­nence to per­sons of in­ter­est on­ly adds to the per­cep­tion and ‘glo­ri­fi­ca­tion’ of the ‘gang-men­tal­i­ty’. At some point, the glob­al pub­lic in­ter­est must be placed as para­mount, rather than com­ments and sto­ries for the pur­pose of sen­sa­tion­al­ism.”

Last night, how­ev­er, Grif­fith told Guardian Me­dia that he promis­es to “back off” from the me­dia if “they do their job right.”

“If arms of the me­dia feel glo­ri­fy­ing per­sons of in­ter­est by giv­ing them me­dia pub­lic­i­ty is “do­ing their job,” it shows that some need to be trained. What do they gain by do­ing this? How does this help the greater good? How does this help the in­ter­est of the pub­lic? Why don’t they go and hunt down the hun­dreds of fam­i­lies who lost their loved ones at the hands of gang mem­bers? What makes a com­mu­ni­ty leader so spe­cial to them? Why are they so ea­ger to find the views and com­ments of the very few that sup­port crim­i­nals and ben­e­fit from crim­i­nal be­hav­iour?” Grif­fith said.

He added: “As I said, this is a mul­ti-bil­lion in­dus­try. It is easy for some of them to write what they feel about cit­i­zens but they get of­fend­ed when oth­ers say how they feel about them. That is hypocrisy. I would back off if they do their job right and stop op­er­at­ing like a TT En­quir­er.”