Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

So the rit­u­al of "con­sul­ta­tions" on the role of state me­dia gets go­ing. We all know how it's go­ing to end, but I'll throw a cou­ple of cents in any­way–com­mon-sense ob­ser­va­tions of which par­ties in Op­po­si­tion have such a firm grasp, but which grasp, once in Gov­ern­ment, goes limp.

First the no-brain­er. De­spite the heavy hand of the Jim­my Bain types at TTT, its archives are ex­ten­sive and valu­able, and of in­ter­est to his­to­ri­ans or reg­u­lar cit­i­zens alike via a plat­form like YouTube. What could be eas­i­er than the digi­ti­sa­tion of TTT's archives and mak­ing them pub­licly avail­able?

That's his­to­ry. What about the fu­ture? The fu­ture of state me­dia is not in jour­nal­ism. It's just too tempt­ing for a par­ty in pow­er to leave a medi­um for dis­sem­i­na­tion of its mes­sage alone, es­pe­cial­ly when it sees it­self mis­rep­re­sent­ed and set-up­on (which they all do). This isn't to say the jour­nal­is­tic func­tion should be aban­doned en­tire­ly, but the vi­able fu­ture of state me­dia is else­where, in cul­ture, in a some­what more se­ri­ous sense than "ca­lyp­so his­to­ry month."

The BBC is a good mod­el for this ap­proach. While the BBC's jour­nal­ism en­joys a high rep­u­ta­tion, nei­ther the in­sti­tu­tion nor its news prod­ucts is be­yond re­proach. Jour­nal­ists like John Pil­ger and Greg Palast, and crit­ics like Noam Chom­sky and Nao­mi Klein would have some­thing to say about that. The or­gan­i­sa­tion has a dis­tinct ide­o­log­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion, and its cul­ture is white mid­dle class and closed to out­siders.

Nat­u­ral­ly, in the name of "di­ver­si­ty" a few coloured bod­ies, voic­es and al­i­bis can al­ways be seen and heard. But there's al­so the re­cent num­ber of pe­dophile and big­otry scan­dals (Jim­my Sav­ile and Je­re­my Clark­son) that have stained its ve­neer of re­spectabil­i­ty. (See Char­lotte Hig­gins' ar­ti­cle in the Lon­don Guardian of April 16, 2014.)

Nonethe­less this is al­so the in­sti­tu­tion that's pro­duced a lot of in­cred­i­bly good en­ter­tain­ment and ed­u­ca­tion­al ma­te­r­i­al: the lat­est Sher­lock se­ries, and a num­ber of mi­ni-se­ries across sev­er­al coun­tries–The Fall in Ire­land; Or­phan Black in Cana­da; Death in Par­adise in the Caribbean (Guade­loupe), Luther in the UK–whose qual­i­ty and ap­peal are bul­let proof.

This is where a pos­si­ble fu­ture of Trinida­di­an state me­dia lies: doc­u­men­ta­tion and en­ter­tain­ment, and they're not mu­tu­al­ly ex­clu­sive. The time and tech­nol­o­gy are right for many doc­u­men­taries on con­tem­po­rary and his­tor­i­cal T&T, since the ig­no­rance of most cit­i­zens about each oth­er and their coun­try is shock­ing–like who speaks San­skrit, where the Cal­cut­ta Ship docks, and what not.

But that's not all. From the steady stream of hor­ror sto­ries com­ing from the pub­lic school sys­tem and Face­book videos, it's clear the coun­try's so­cial­is­ing in­sti­tu­tions ei­ther don't work, or don't know their jobs. The use of mass me­dia as so­cial­is­ing in­stru­ments al­ready hap­pens–the kids and adults watch the Kar­dashi­ans, rap videos, movies, In­ter­net porn, and con­scious­ly and un­con­scious­ly live what they see. The trick is to catch their at­ten­tion de­lib­er­ate­ly with pro­gram­ming which in­cul­cates pos­i­tive val­ues in­stead of al­low­ing it to be done by de­fault.

An­thro­pol­o­gist Dan­ny Miller wrote a very re­veal­ing pa­per about the role of Amer­i­can soap op­eras in the 80s in Trinidad in moral ed­u­ca­tion. (Did the Hon Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions read it?)

So TV can teach peo­ple pos­i­tive things. But here aris­es a ma­jor prob­lem: gate-keep­ing. Who de­cides and what's good and not? A for­mer cu­ra­tor of the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um wrote a let­ter to the press in 2009 re­veal­ing the very spe­cif­ic and tox­ic cul­tur­al agen­da of the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion and how it worked: con­trol, se­lect, sup­press non-con­form­ing ma­te­r­i­al. One of the first acts of the new ad­min­is­tra­tion at state-owned CN­MG was pulling a live press con­fer­ence off the air. This does not bode well for the fu­ture.

The state is gen­er­al­ly not just con­ser­v­a­tive but down­right re­ac­tionary in its choic­es in these mat­ters–which scripts, what sto­ries and im­ages, who ex­e­cutes them. At this point, the process gets be­comes war for the gov­ern­ment trough. The phe­nom­e­non paral­y­ses many if not all in­sti­tu­tions in the coun­try. It takes re­al man­age­r­i­al strength, skill and vi­sion to neu­tralise this. Does the new ad­min­is­tra­tion have it?

There are and have been some pri­vate sec­tor at­tempts which are in­struc­tive. An in­ter­est­ing ef­fort at lo­cal pro­gram­ming was un­der­tak­en by Banyan till it im­plod­ed a few years ago. Some of it wasn't bad, but the mon­ey ran out, and in­vestors (as I un­der­stand it) are not in­ter­est­ed any more. But one in­sti­tu­tion that's man­aged to suc­ceed with lo­cal con­tent is the T&T Film Fes­ti­val, in whose busi­ness mod­el and ap­proach there's much to learn from.

All this said, the ma­jor prob­lem re­mains mon­ey. And it shouldn't be. This is the coun­try which gave $300 mil­lion-plus to Car­ni­val last year, and pre­sum­ably will give some ab­surd nine-fig­ure sum this year, for the same re­turns as last year–ze­ro or less.

If a third of this bud­get were to be di­rect­ed at film and tele­vi­sion, and a vet­ting process were un­der­tak­en to pick le­git­i­mate can­di­dates, with­in a year or two there could be a vi­able stream of lo­cal con­tent, which pro­vides lo­cal em­ploy­ment, which could be shown con­tin­u­ous­ly on Chan­nel 4. The next step would be to con­vince, or force, lo­cal com­pa­nies to in­vest, even if via ad­ver­tis­ing. Why they don't is in part be­cause of the laugh­able am­a­teurism they see but re­main silent about, be­cause, well, is de cult-yere. (Crit­i­cism is un­pa­tri­ot­ic, ap­par­ent­ly, be­cause, you know, O gord, we tryin'.)

This, to re­peat, is all com­mon sense. But there is an­oth­er more force­ful im­per­a­tive for the pro­duc­tion of lo­cal ma­te­r­i­al–the cul­tur­al im­per­a­tive.

n To be con­tin­ued.