Tony Fras­er

To­day it is Fazeer, yes­ter­day it was Verne Bur­nett, the day be­fore that it was Tony Fras­er, and be­fore them there were Jones Madeira, Afzal Khan, Gideon Hanooman-singh and sev­er­al oth­er jour­nal­ists who could claim with dif­fer­ent lev­els of le­git­i­ma­cy and for dif­fer­ent shades of rea­son that their work and the free­dom of the state-owned me­dia were in­fringed by a gov­ern­ment in of­fice usurp­ing state prop­er­ty and vi­o­lat­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

But the names men­tioned on­ly deal with con­tem­po­rary times, the last 15 years. Pre­vi­ous to that pe­ri­od, none oth­er than Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan, Karl Hud­son-Phillips and the lead­er­ship of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Na­tion­al Re­con­struc­tion had cause to take the board and man­age­ment of state-owned Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion to court for deny­ing them the right to the ex­pres­sion of le­git­i­mate po­lit­i­cal opin­ion on state tele­vi­sion. In a sig­nif­i­cant judg­ment, Jus­tice Deyals­ingh ruled that the rights of the com­plainants were vi­o­lat­ed and that, es­pe­cial­ly, state-owned me­dia had the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to al­low all shades of po­lit­i­cal opin­ion to be vent­ed in the pub­lic mar­ket place for pub­lic con­sump­tion.

But even be­fore that im­broglio, the in­fa­mous James Al­va Bain, as chair­man of the na­tion­al broad­cast­ing sys­tem in­clu­sive of TTT and 610 Ra­dio, fired the likes of Raoul Pan­tin, Wilbert Hold­er, Tony Williams (broth­er of Er­ic Williams) Leo DeLeon, Jim­my May­nard and banned from the air­waves of the sta­tions the voic­es and per­son­al­i­ties of Bas­deo Pan­day, Raf­fique Shah and George Weekes. I re­fer to the his­to­ry be­cause we need to place in per­spec­tive con­tem­po­rary events to in­form an un­der­stand­ing of what has tak­en place and, most im­por­tant­ly, to gain an in­sight in­to the na­ture of the prob­lem and what is to be done.

The his­to­ry shows that our po­lit­i­cal cul­ture has thrown up politi­cians who are in­tol­er­ant of po­lit­i­cal opin­ions which are op­posed to theirs and are ab­solute­ly hos­tile to those who are crit­i­cal of them. When in op­po­si­tion, politi­cians urge on the me­dia when they are crit­i­cal of the gov­ern­ment of the day. But the mo­ment they are elect­ed, they find every rea­son to seek to dele­git­imise me­dia and damn a few of the very jour­nal­ists they praised the day be­fore when they were in op­po­si­tion. But cur­tail­ment of jour­nal­is­tic free­dom is on­ly the most pub­lic trans­gres­sion. Over the decades, the man­age­ment of state-owned me­dia has been bul­lied in­to mak­ing them the ex­clu­sive tool for gov­ern­ment use. On oc­ca­sion, air time has been cor­rupt­ly com­man­deered dur­ing an elec­tion pe­ri­od: Sta­tions are in­struct­ed to pre-empt sched­uled pro­gram­ming at the de­sire of par­ties/gov­ern­ments to put min­is­ters on the air with the thinnest of ex­cus­es that the sub­ject is of na­tion­al im­por­tance.

At an­oth­er lev­el, par­ty hacks are hired to do the bid­ding of gov­ern­ing par­ties dis­guised as gov­ern­ments: Peo­ple who have lit­tle un­der­stand­ing of me­dia and even less ca­pac­i­ty for se­ri­ous con­tem­pla­tion of the func­tions of me­dia are placed on boards mere­ly to look af­ter the in­ter­est of the par­ty and the gov­ern­ment in the nar­row­est pos­si­ble con­cep­tion of that term. To­wards the pri­vate­ly-owned me­dia, politi­cians/gov­ern­ments de­ny non-com­pli­ant me­dia hous­es of ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enue, even refuse them for­eign ex­change to pur­chase newsprint. Con­verse­ly, heavy mas­sag­ing is ap­plied to me­dia whose man­agers are will­ing to com­pro­mise jour­nal­is­tic prin­ci­ples. In­ci­den­tal­ly, this is not a T&T phe­nom­e­non. In many Caribbean states, me­dia owned by the State are con­vert­ed in­to "gov­ern­ment-owned;" no pre­tence here.

This usurpa­tion has had dis­as­trous ef­fects on the op­er­a­tions of state me­dia, on stan­dards of jour­nal­ism, on the fi­nan­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty of those me­dia, with re­gard to the qual­i­ty of gov­er­nance of the coun­try; and has neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed the democ­ra­cy be­ing at­tempt­ed. But "irony of ironies," the at­tempts at keep­ing state-owned me­dia com­pli­ant with gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy and par­ty am­bi­tions have not achieved the ob­jec­tives of the gov­ern­ments. Con­trol of state me­dia has not saved gov­ern­ments from the wrath of the elec­torate. If there were more space we could have traced the his­to­ry of the usurpa­tion of state-owned me­dia and the for­tunes of po­lit­i­cal par­ties at the next elec­tion us­ing the cap­tured me­dia.

The his­to­ry has shown that the first ca­su­al­ty of any at­tempt to sti­fle opin­ion and to con­trol jour­nal­ists at the state-owned is the loss of cred­i­bil­i­ty of the me­dia sta­tions. The ex­pe­ri­ence has been that the au­di­ence share of state-owned me­dia de­clines pre­cip­i­tous­ly once it is per­ceived that the gov­ern­ment of the day is in­ter­fer­ing. With the de­cline in au­di­ence share goes the ad­ver­tis­ing dol­lar, staff morale sinks, sus­pi­cion and in­trigue take cen­tre stage with­in the state me­dia as em­ploy­ees most nat­u­ral­ly seek to pro­tect their jobs, and if news-car­ry­ing is one way to en­sure they pay their bills and mort­gage at the end of the month, then its "dev­il takes the hind­most."

Pa­tron­age be­comes the or­der of the day, over­tak­ing jour­nal­is­tic in­tegri­ty, cre­ativ­i­ty and en­er­gy and soon enough gov­ern­ments find them­selves in the po­si­tion of hav­ing to bankroll the state me­dia in per­pe­tu­ity. The cul­mi­na­tion of usurpa­tion is that the gov­ern­ment of the day gains lit­tle as the au­di­ence dis­ap­pears. Iron­i­cal­ly, even sup­port­ers of the rul­ing par­ty are no longer in­ter­est­ed in view­ing and lis­ten­ing to the state-owned me­dia be­cause they are per­ceived as hav­ing lit­tle so­cial val­ue. Un­der the Pan­day regime of 1995-2001, the Na­tion­al Broad­cast­ing Net­work, af­ter Mr Pan­day had ex­co­ri­at­ed it as a means of hav­ing it sub­ject to his will, told UNC sup­port­ers that NBN was bi­ased against the Gov­ern­ment. At the same time, PNM sup­port­ers per­ceived it as be­ing cap­tive of the rul­ing UNC. Oth­ers out­side of both camps be­came scep­ti­cal. Bom­bard­ed on all sides, the me­dia house in­evitably crashed.

But lead­ing up to that time and when ICN (pre­cur­sor name to NBN) be­gan turn­ing a prof­it, the PNM promised pri­vati­sa­tion. Man­ning called the elec­tion ear­ly and lost but there was no ev­i­dence that the gov­ern­ment would have kept its word. In­deed, the PNM had an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty post 2001 to es­tab­lish a vi­able and in­de­pen­dent state me­dia; it main­tained its grip on the in­sti­tu­tion. The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, notwith­stand­ing what has hap­pened in the Fazeer Mo­hammed case, has an op­por­tu­ni­ty to evolve a state-owned me­dia house that would meet the re­quire­ment for pro­fes­sion­al­ism and in­de­pen­dence. Al­ter­na­tive­ly, the PP Gov­ern­ment can con­tin­ue on the well-trod path of the short his­to­ry as list­ed above.

* To be con­tin­ued