Max­ie Cuffie

"The no­tion that jour­nal­ism can reg­u­lar­ly pro­duce a prod­uct that vi­o­lates the fun­da­men­tal in­ter­ests of me­dia own­ers and ad­ver­tis­ers...is ab­surd."

–Robert Mc­Ch­es­ney, jour­nal­ist and au­thor of Rich Me­dia, Poor Democ­ra­cy

While Trinidad and To­ba­go was ob­sess­ing over the email­gate is­sue (with its sev­er­al sub­plots) which led in­to the Jack and Kam­la saga, Grena­da was qui­et­ly mov­ing to make "of­fen­sive" e-mails a crim­i­nal of­fence. In a bill en­ti­tled the Elec­tron­ic Crimes Act 2012, the Grena­da gov­ern­ment has pro­posed a law to crim­i­nalise the send­ing of "of­fen­sive mes­sages through (elec­tron­ic) com­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vices."

This means that if the law is passed in Grena­da you can be charged with a crim­i­nal of­fence for a Face­book post­ing, a li­bel­lous e-mail, or post­ing "of­fen­sive" lan­guage on news­pa­per blogs which can be con­sid­ered to be aimed at in­cit­ing "an­noy­ance, in­con­ve­nience, in­sult or ill-will."The crime car­ries a one-year jail term and up to EC$100,000 in fines.The Grena­da law is tucked in­to a bill that al­so deals with child pornog­ra­phy, elec­tron­ic stalk­ing and oth­er com­put­er crimes.

Last month Ecuador passed a law that cre­ates the of­fence of "me­dia-lynch­ing" which it de­fined "as the re­peat­ed pub­li­ca­tion or broad­cast of in­for­ma­tion in­tend­ed to smear a per­son's rep­u­ta­tion or re­duce one's cred­i­bil­i­ty," ac­cord­ing to a New York Times re­port.

Ecuador and Grena­da are de­mo­c­ra­t­ic coun­tries but they have found cause with Jor­dan, a monar­chy, which last month blocked 254 "un­li­censed Web sites" af­ter is­su­ing an ear­li­er threat to close down 300 to 400 news Web sites that had failed to ob­tain a li­cence un­der a 2012 law.

This is why the pro­posed changes to the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act (Chap 47:13) which seeks to bring among oth­er mea­sures, In­ter­net do­main name reg­is­tra­tion un­der gov­ern­ment con­trol, through the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT), is a first step that should wor­ry Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans whichev­er par­ty is in pow­er.

It all part of a pro­posed bill that would al­low TATT to fine me­dia hous­es, seize equip­ment and even even­tu­al­ly con­trol the In­ter­net lo­cal­ly, if that is pos­si­ble. The T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion is against it as is the T&T Com­put­er So­ci­ety.

Ac­cord­ing to the draft pol­i­cy now out for pub­lic com­ment, TATT is propos­ing an amend­ment to the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Act "to fa­cil­i­tate the widen­ing of the au­thor­i­ty's func­tion in co-or­di­nat­ing the ad­dress­ing schema used by forms of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions oth­er than tele­pho­ny (like In­ter­net do­main reg­is­tra­tion)."

TATT recog­nis­es that the in­ter­na­tion­al non-gov­ern­ment or­gan­i­sa­tion which con­trols the In­ter­net will not eas­i­ly al­low this to take place but sur­pris­ing­ly is un­daunt­ed. In its pol­i­cy doc­u­ment the au­thor­i­ty states:

"This does not sug­gest that the au­thor­i­ty will forth­with as­sume this role up­on the pro­mul­ga­tion of such amend­ments, as there is con­sid­er­able ground­work that is to be com­plet­ed in con­nec­tion with in­ter­act­ing with in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies, be­fore the per­for­mance of this func­tion is ac­tu­alised. The state­ment of in­tent, how­ev­er, would pro­vide strate­gic and pol­i­cy guid­ance in re­la­tion to the au­thor­i­ty's func­tion in this sphere."

When one takes in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that all me­dia are in­creas­ing­ly be­ing de­liv­ered via the In­ter­net from books, movies, records to even tele­phone calls and news­pa­pers, one can gauge the lev­el of the pow­er any gov­ern­ment would have un­der its con­trol. This is why, no gov­ern­ment in de­mo­c­ra­t­ic coun­tries at­tempts to even gain ac­cess to the net­work of net­works which is gov­erned in­ter­na­tion­al­ly by the In­ter­net Cor­po­ra­tion for As­signed Names and Num­bers (ICANN).

The In­ter­net is a re­al and present dan­ger to all gov­ern­ments with­out pop­u­lar sup­port as events across the world have shown, but to even con­tem­plate it in the hands of TATT, a po­lit­i­cal­ly ap­point­ed body, should give every­one cause for con­cern.Last year, the chair­man of the TATT, at the be­hest of a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, wrote to a ca­ble provider in an at­tempt to rein in a pro­gramme that was con­sid­ered too crit­i­cal of the Gov­ern­ment. We can take noth­ing for grant­ed.

The Gov­ern­ment should recog­nise that the me­dia en­vi­ron­ment of 2013 is much dif­fer­ent to what ex­ist­ed in 1996 and that it is as im­pos­si­ble to con­trol the me­dia as it is to con­trol the In­ter­net. No gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial who ex­pe­ri­enced the ag­gres­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tions of the Patrick Man­ning PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion will agree that what is be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by the PP is any­thing pe­cu­liar or spe­cial.It is to the cred­it of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, that in re­spond­ing to the lat­est furore to af­fect the Guardian, she has ad­mit­ted as much.

"I am not of that view. We are in a new world in a new time, new tech­nol­o­gy and so on and that's your job, the me­dia has (sic) their job, I have mine and we con­tin­ue to work har­mo­nious­ly," she was quot­ed as telling re­porters last week.Now if on­ly she could get that mes­sage through to her Cab­i­net.

Max­ie Cuffie runs a me­dia con­sul­tan­cy, In­te­grat­ed Me­dia Com­pa­ny Ltd, is an eco­nom­ics grad­u­ate of the UWI and holds an MPA from the Har­vard Kennedy School as a Ma­son Fel­low in Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and Man­age­ment.