It was the late Amer­i­can pres­i­dent Abra­ham Lin­coln who fa­mous­ly said, “A fool has him­self for a lawyer.”

This is why we did not rush to put pen to pa­per last week when the broad­cast in­dus­try reg­u­la­tor, the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT), stepped in­to the breach, to ef­fec­tive­ly warn this me­dia house that it could lose its broad­cast li­cence over its re­port­ing of ‘of­fen­sive’ com­ments made by for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley at a news con­fer­ence.

Dur­ing that con­fer­ence at his Glen­coe home on March 17, which was broad­cast live on so­cial me­dia, Dr Row­ley made what we ac­knowl­edge to be dis­parag­ing re­marks about cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

This was in re­sponse to equal­ly dis­parag­ing re­marks she made about him and the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in Par­lia­ment a few days be­fore.

As is the norm, and in keep­ing with our man­date to de­liv­er bal­anced re­port­ing, we first re­port­ed on the Prime Min­is­ter’s al­le­ga­tions in Par­lia­ment on March 13 that the PNM’s Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters had been fi­nanced with drug mon­ey and that the par­ty is in “ca­hoots with crim­i­nals.”

We al­so re­port­ed on the Op­po­si­tion’s re­sponse to those un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed pub­lic claims.

This was the con­text in which Dr Row­ley made his con­tro­ver­sial “jamette” re­mark, which our in­de­pen­dent reg­u­la­tor took par­tic­u­lar um­brage to.

“The Au­thor­i­ty here­by cau­tions GML (CNC3) that, as a na­tion­al tele­vi­sion sta­tion, it is ob­lig­at­ed to ex­er­cise re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in its broad­cast­ing with a high de­gree of due dili­gence and ac­cord­ing­ly avoid any lan­guage that is of an of­fen­sive or deroga­to­ry na­ture and/or con­trary to the con­ces­sion con­di­tions.

“GML (CNC3) is there­fore ad­vised to prac­tice greater over­sight and mon­i­tor­ing to en­sure com­pli­ance with its con­ces­sion. Please be guid­ed ac­cord­ing­ly,” TATT CEO Kurleigh Prescod said in his let­ter to Guardian Me­dia dat­ed March 20.

While we have ab­solute­ly no prob­lem with TATT polic­ing our broad­casts in ac­cor­dance with the es­tab­lished Broad­cast­ing Act, the ques­tion must be asked: Where was TATT all along? What is be­hind this seem­ing­ly se­lec­tive out­rage by our in­de­pen­dent reg­u­la­tor when our his­to­ry is re­plete with ex­am­ples of un­be­com­ing be­hav­iour by politi­cians in re­sponse to which the same in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia re­port­ing stan­dard has been ap­plied?

Why was there no out­rage over our broad­cast of the Prime Min­is­ter’s ac­cu­sa­tions about the PNM, al­so made back in Oc­to­ber 2025, that the PNM was a “nar­co-par­ty” fund­ed by a “lo­cal drug mafia”? She has al­so cat­e­gorised Op­po­si­tion mem­bers as “pae­dophiles” and dur­ing the re­cent failed ZOSO de­bate, re­ferred to our in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors as “brown nosers,” “bootlick­ers” and “low-lev­el PNM func­tionar­ies?”

Are these state­ments not al­so ‘of an of­fen­sive or deroga­to­ry na­ture’?

More­over, where was TATT when for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gats­by Dol­ly, in tak­ing is­sue with sug­ges­tions from the Prime Min­is­ter that PNM MPs were dunce, told the Prime Min­is­ter, “If you were not an old la­dy, I would tell you where to haul a body part which we all hold dear.”

Iron­i­cal­ly, the rest of her so­cial me­dia post, which found its way in­to main­stream me­dia, reeked of the same dis­re­spect and shame­less­ness she had ac­cused the prime min­is­ter of.

We could go on, for ex­am­ple, to men­tion for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young re­fer­ring to the then Op­po­si­tion leader, in an off-mic com­ment in Par­lia­ment, as a “za­m­mie;” our PM’s dis­parag­ing ref­er­ence to Dr Row­ley as “an Oreo” and Dr Roodal Mooni­lal call­ing Dr Row­ley a “skunk.”

Clear­ly, it is the be­hav­iour of our politi­cians that ur­gent­ly needs to be reg­u­lat­ed, and the tone of our na­tion­al dis­course to im­me­di­ate­ly change, but for good­ness sake TATT, don’t shoot the mes­sen­ger!