World Press Free­dom Day (May 3) usu­al­ly comes and goes in T&T with the cus­tom­ary “state­ments” by our me­dia as­so­ci­a­tions and mod­er­ate men­tion by politi­cians—many of whom are not sure whether they hate or they love the jour­nal­ists who fol­low them around. Then, that’s it, un­til the fol­low­ing year.

This time around, in the midst of one of the more chal­leng­ing pe­ri­ods in the his­to­ry of Caribbean me­dia, there was the added con­text of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, and a UN­ESCO-led glob­al agen­da for the oc­ca­sion that fo­cused on the prac­tice of (re­al) jour­nal­ism “with­out fear or favour.”

It all set the stage for more than cur­so­ry ex­am­i­na­tion of the state of play with­in an in­dus­try al­ready at a crit­i­cal so­cial and eco­nom­ic in­ter­sec­tion—chal­lenged in re­cent years by the ad­vent of ca­coph­o­nous so­cial me­dia plat­forms boast­ing free con­tent, and the re­al­i­ty of changed mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­forms and process­es.

Yet, so re­mote are the com­pul­sions of pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ism and me­dia as en­ter­prise from a tran­sient band of clue­less part-timers that a re­quire­ment to op­er­ate in the ab­sence of fear or favour reg­is­tered ze­ro res­o­nance among them. Did you see any of it?

It is ir­rel­e­vant to some pur­port­ed prac­ti­tion­ers that a pro­fes­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty op­er­at­ing on the ba­sis of a pledge (how­ev­er im­per­fect­ly pur­sued) to get the sto­ries of our lives right, is con­cerned that for both in­ter­nal and ex­oge­nous rea­sons, their cred­i­bil­i­ty by be un­der­mined. It is a po­ten­tial­ly dead­ly con­cern.

Ap­a­thy in such mat­ters is par­tic­u­lar­ly ev­i­dent among those lay­ing claim to cre­den­tials with­out the req­ui­site com­mit­ment to the key prin­ci­ples of bal­ance, fair­ness, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Opaque on­line “news sites” with no known boards of di­rec­tors, man­agers, ed­i­tors, re­porters, or ed­i­to­r­i­al guide­lines in­clud­ing stan­dards for ver­i­fi­ca­tion. Just the plain brown pa­per bag of po­lit­i­cal or com­mer­cial re­ward. Where, with­in them, con­se­quent­ly, is there a con­cern about a jour­nal­ism with­out fear or favour?

This year, in time for UN­ESCO’s ob­ser­vances of World Press Free­dom Day in the Caribbean, I was as­signed the dif­fi­cult task of ex­am­in­ing cur­rent de­vel­op­ments in the me­dia sec­tor with­in the con­text of what re­searchers de­scribe as “me­dia cap­ture”. It on­ly then oc­curred to me that the term in­deed has mean­ing be­yond his­tor­i­cal an­tecedent in the Caribbean and the re­al­i­ties of coun­tries in de­mo­c­ra­t­ic tran­si­tion in oth­er parts of the world.

For though it’s not my view that a con­cen­tra­tion of me­dia own­er­ship and/or hege­mon­ic con­trol over jour­nal­is­tic con­tent is our lived re­al­i­ty, the cur­rent storm presents risks about which those with a gen­uine in­ter­est in the busi­ness of me­dia ought to be con­cerned.

For those on the pe­riph­ery lay­ing false claim to turf, it sim­ply does not mat­ter. You won’t hear this dis­cus­sion among them, even as they pur­sue the cap­ture of the hearts and minds of me­dia au­di­ences.

For the rest of us, it mat­ters that even as the emer­gence of new play­ers in large num­bers in the for­mal sec­tor over the past 30 years has re­duced the po­ten­tial for the ex­clu­sive stim­u­la­tion of eyes and ears, the cur­rent de­cline in fi­nan­cial for­tunes, quick­ened by the pan­dem­ic, pos­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­vers­ing such sta­tus.

The grow­ing fi­nan­cial pover­ty of the sec­tor ac­com­pa­nied by changes in me­dia mar­ket struc­tures and the sub­ver­sive role of big tech dig­i­tal multi­na­tion­als are al­ready pre­sent­ing to lega­cy me­dia un­par­al­leled chal­lenges. Now comes the pan­dem­ic and ac­tions tak­en to ad­dress its pos­si­ble im­pacts.

In al­most every Caribbean coun­try there is the shad­ow of re-emer­gent state in­for­ma­tion sys­tems—once the stuff of broad­cast in­dus­try hege­mo­ny—and the re­silience of big­ger, stronger glob­al cor­po­ra­tions with well-known eyes on the news agen­da.

All these fac­tors, I warned a UN­ESCO au­di­ence on Mon­day, can have the cu­mu­la­tive im­pact of pro­mot­ing re­sort to the rel­a­tive safe­ty of self-cen­sor­ship while ham­per­ing the abil­i­ty of in­de­pen­dent, pro­fes­sion­al me­dia to chal­lenge ex­ist­ing com­mer­cial and po­lit­i­cal pow­er struc­tures.

There has been noth­ing, since the trans­for­ma­tion­al im­pacts of the (de­layed) in­tro­duc­tion of the print­ing press in the Caribbean and, much lat­er, the com­mu­ni­ca­tions en­vi­ron­ment of a world at war, to match the rev­o­lu­tion­ary cir­cum­stances of the cur­rent Caribbean me­dia en­vi­ron­ment.

A sim­ple ques­tion. Think about a world re­liant on life-sav­ing news and in­for­ma­tion from those who op­er­ate un­con­cerned about and un­con­nect­ed from these re­al­i­ties.