In com­mem­o­ra­tion of World Press Free­dom Day, we hear from a vet­er­an jour­nal­ist and broad­cast­er on her ca­reer and how she’s re­mained stand­ing de­spite the many tests and pres­sures.

sto­ries by Cherisse Moe

Vet­er­an jour­nal­ist Avril St Hill-Babb re­mem­bers when her news team was told to make a high-rank­ing of­fi­cial look good. The in­di­vid­ual had just fin­ished an in­ter­view and sent a mes­sage to the news­room warn­ing them to be “very care­ful” in telling the sto­ry.

“I was high­ly ag­i­tat­ed. These were pub­lic ut­ter­ances; we were not go­ing to use in­for­ma­tion that was con­trived. His com­ments sug­gest­ed we had some kind of per­son­al vendet­ta or self-serv­ing rea­son we would have had to make him look bad,” she re­calls.

St Hill-Babb took the mat­ter straight to her su­pe­ri­or. The sto­ry ran any­way.

“I felt vin­di­cat­ed when I pre­sent­ed the ar­gu­ment to my boss. He agreed with me and was just as in­censed with the fact that this per­son felt he could tell us how to do our sto­ry. That they felt they had some sort of con­trol. I was hap­py that we paid no mind to his veiled threats.”

It was a clear les­son in the kind of pres­sure that can come with the job — and how jour­nal­ism some­times gets test­ed in re­al time.

To­day is World Press Free­dom Day — a date that brings those be­hind-the-scenes news­room ten­sions in­to a much wider frame. A Unit­ed Na­tions ob­ser­vance set up in 1993 to mark the De­c­la­ra­tion of Wind­hoek, it is a day to take stock of me­dia free­dom around the world and re­mem­ber in­dus­try pro­fes­sion­als who’ve lost their lives do­ing their work.

Re­porters With­out Bor­ders says glob­al press free­dom has dropped this year, with Trinidad and To­ba­go slip­ping 13 places to 32nd out of 180 coun­tries. The coun­try is de­scribed as hav­ing a “vi­brant me­dia land­scape,” but the re­port points to weak­er so­cial and se­cu­ri­ty con­di­tions, with fe­male jour­nal­ists es­pe­cial­ly fac­ing ha­rass­ment and grow­ing ten­sion be­tween me­dia and po­lit­i­cal fig­ures.

“To me, press free­dom means re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” says St Hill-Babb, known in me­dia cir­cles as AV St Hill. “The laws that gov­ern free speech must be up­held to en­sure that the me­dia is not hin­dered in re­port­ing the truth. The pub­lic must not on­ly de­mand that the truth be told but co­op­er­ate to en­sure it’s done ef­fec­tive­ly. And the me­dia must tell this truth in a re­spon­si­ble man­ner.”

With 27 years in the in­dus­try, St Hill-Babb has worked in dif­fer­ent roles in tele­vi­sion — from archivist to teleprompter op­er­a­tor — be­fore be­com­ing the sta­tion’s lead­ing fe­male voice. Her dis­tinc­tive tone al­so be­came well known on lo­cal ra­dio, and her in­ter­views on the en­ter­tain­ment beat from back in the day are still re­mem­bered.

She thinks the way the in­dus­try is shown pub­licly has shaped how peo­ple see jour­nal­ists. “Many have be­come com­fort­able view­ing the me­dia as, at best, a nui­sance, at worst, an en­e­my — just look at how the me­dia is por­trayed on TV and in movies! But a lot of work and sac­ri­fice goes in­to what we do, the sto­ries that are read over and over again, that in­form and de­serve re­spect,” she tells WE.

St Hill-Babb’s first as­sign­ment was cov­er­ing a busi­ness sem­i­nar — not ex­act­ly her com­fort zone at the time. She re­mem­bers rush­ing down­stairs to her car to call in the re­port and make the mid­day dead­line. It was near­ly three decades ago, but the feel­ing of ac­com­plish­ment has stayed with her. Now, as a se­nior ra­dio jour­nal­ist, she con­tin­ues to up­hold the free­dom and in­tegri­ty of the na­tion’s fourth es­tate.