Judy Ray­mond

Judy Ray­mond

Ed­i­tor-in-Chief

In 2005 I re­signed as act­ing ed­i­tor of the T&T Guardian on a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple.It was a de­ci­sion that took me per­haps 30 min­utes to make, and I was sure it was the right thing to do.Dur­ing the course of the last week, I spent sev­er­al days con­sid­er­ing leav­ing the Guardian again. But at no point was I cer­tain that leav­ing would be the right de­ci­sion.Be­fore re­turn­ing to the Guardian last March, I had spent two years talk­ing to the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Gabriel Faria, and oth­er ex­ec­u­tives, about the prospect of go­ing back.

When I even­tu­al­ly de­cid­ed to ac­cept the pa­per's of­fer to lead the ed­i­to­r­i­al de­part­ment, I felt com­fort­able that things were dif­fer­ent. The com­pa­ny now recog­nised that change was need­ed and the qual­i­ty of the pa­per had to be lift­ed in a num­ber of ways.Dur­ing the last 15 months I have been sup­port­ed by our MD and the board in build­ing a very good team that I feel has the po­ten­tial to be the best in the busi­ness.

We have worked to sup­port and de­vel­op the tal­ents of jour­nal­ists al­ready in the news­room. We brought in and are still bring­ing in oth­ers–ed­i­tors, colum­nists, re­porters and pho­tog­ra­phers–who in­clude Irv­ing Ward, Denyse Renne, Fran­ka Philip and Dar­ren Ba­haw.

We have worked very hard, and the coun­try and our com­peti­tors have recog­nised that in that short time we have made a dif­fer­ence. We have been re­spon­si­ble for ma­jor sto­ries on top­ics that in­clude Sec­tion 34, the $6.8 mil­lion firetruck, the re­vived Fly­ing Squad, Dr Hafi­zo­ol Mo­hammed and the botched Sea Lots probe.The process of trans­form­ing the Guardian is far from com­plete, and we still need to raise our stan­dards fur­ther.

Dur­ing this pe­ri­od, the board has ex­pressed con­cerns about po­lit­i­cal bias and ac­cu­ra­cy. Both have been the sub­jects of lengthy and some­times heat­ed dis­cus­sions with man­age­ment.Last week I was asked to ex­pand and com­plete a doc­u­ment out­lin­ing ed­i­to­r­i­al pol­i­cy and guide­lines. Not an un­rea­son­able pro­pos­al–but in or­der to do so, I was man­dat­ed to "go of­fline"–a phrase open to alarm­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tions.

In any me­dia house there is al­ways ten­sion be­tween the news­room and the board­room. Jour­nal­ists are fo­cused on re­port­ing the news in the in­ter­est of the pub­lic; di­rec­tors are con­cerned with the in­ter­ests of share­hold­ers. In 2013 we are work­ing in a coun­try with a po­lit­i­cal­ly over­heat­ed cli­mate. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries abound, and para­noia is wide­spread. Press free­dom must be es­pe­cial­ly zeal­ous­ly guard­ed in such cir­cum­stances.

There were re­ports of the dis­missal of our MD and our sec­tor head and about po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence at the board lev­el. There were con­flict­ing ver­sions of what was hap­pen­ing and why. Feel­ings in­side and out­side the news­room ran high.

On Wednes­day, I met with a group of se­nior ed­i­tors to de­cide on a joint course of ac­tion, but the sit­u­a­tion was still un­clear. We agreed to wait for 24 hours. Re­porters Denyse Renne and Ani­ka Gumbs and pub­lic af­fairs ed­i­tor Dr Sheila Ram­per­sad, how­ev­er, chose to ten­der their res­ig­na­tions im­me­di­ate­ly.

In fair­ness to the Guardian, through­out the week the com­pa­ny was open to talks and we had sev­er­al meet­ings, in­clud­ing one painful­ly frank but mu­tu­al­ly en­light­en­ing dis­cus­sion with se­nior man­age­ment last Thurs­day.At that meet­ing I list­ed the con­di­tions un­der which I would agree to stay, and the com­pa­ny agreed to meet them.An im­por­tant sta­tis­tic was cit­ed in that meet­ing: that the ANSA McAL group de­rives on­ly two per cent of its rev­enue from gov­ern­ment con­tracts.

This puts a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent com­plex­ion on the be­lief that the group is vul­ner­a­ble to po­lit­i­cal pres­sure.It al­so be­came ap­par­ent dur­ing that meet­ing that there had been a num­ber of ap­palling mis­un­der­stand­ings and hasty judg­ments on both sides, some fu­elled by mis­in­for­ma­tion and ac­tive mis­chief fed in­to the news­room from ex­ter­nal sources.

At that point, giv­en the wide­spread be­lief that what was go­ing on was a bat­tle for press free­dom, it would still have been eas­i­er for me to claim what ap­peared to be the moral high ground and leave. In the knowl­edge of the re­al cir­cum­stances, how­ev­er, al­though it would have saved me much em­bar­rass­ment and crit­i­cism, I don't be­lieve it would have been the right thing to do.

Jour­nal­ism is not just a job. It goes be­yond the con­tract one has with one's em­ploy­er. It al­so en­tails a com­mit­ment and oblig­a­tion to the ethics of the pro­fes­sion, and to the pub­lic.I al­so have oblig­a­tions to the news­room team that I have the priv­i­lege to lead.If I left, oth­er mem­bers of that team would al­so leave, and the work that we have been do­ing over the past year would come to an abrupt and pre­ma­ture end.I don't be­lieve any­one's in­ter­ests–not the news­room's, not the Guardian's, not the coun­try's–would be best served by that.

The jour­nal­ists who opt­ed to ten­der their res­ig­na­tions last week did so at a time when a great deal of mis­in­for­ma­tion was cir­cu­lat­ing and I very much re­gret the po­si­tion in which they found them­selves.Dr Sheila Ram­per­sad and I have known each oth­er for over 20 years. I have the great­est re­spect for her prin­ci­ples, her in­tel­li­gence and her pro­fes­sion­al skills. But I gen­uine­ly be­lieve that she is mis­tak­en in con­tin­u­ing to in­sist that there was a sur­ren­der to po­lit­i­cal pres­sure and that press free­dom is un­der threat at the Guardian.

As Sheila knows, I asked for and re­ceived a guar­an­tee from the com­pa­ny that we must be free to prac­tise jour­nal­ism as we have done in this news­room for the past 15 months, on ex­act­ly the same terms. The com­pa­ny ac­cept­ed that. Both sides have made a re­newed com­mit­ment to ac­cu­ra­cy, bal­ance and re­spon­si­ble re­port­ing.

As a jour­nal­ist and as an ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion–a post from which I have now re­signed–I have worked to pro­mote press free­dom and I am not go­ing to be­tray that prin­ci­ple now.If I be­lieved for a mo­ment that there had been or would be any in­fringe­ment of that free­dom at the Guardian, or that my role as EIC were be­ing cur­tailed, I would not have cho­sen to stay.