The Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (MATT) has spo­ken out again Trinidad-born US-based rap­per Nic­ki Mi­naj for her at­tacks on lo­cal re­porter Shar­lene Ram­per­sad on so­cial me­dia.

In a me­dia re­lease on Sat­ur­day, Dr Sheila Ram­per­sad, out­go­ing MATT pres­i­dent said "Nic­ki Mi­naj’s celebri­ty gang­ster­ism to­wards Guardian Me­dia Ltd’s (GML) re­porter, Shar­lene Ram­per­sad, is text­book cy­ber­bul­ly­ing and in­tim­i­da­tion of a free press in a young democ­ra­cy.

"While Ms Mi­naj may be jus­ti­fied in call­ing for scruti­ny of the jour­nal­ist’s meth­ods—that is, stok­ing the fears of an or­di­nary cit­i­zen caught, through no ac­tion of his own, in the mael­strom of an in­ter­na­tion­al sto­ry—the rap­per’s doxxing and cussing are ex­treme re­ac­tions that should con­cern those clos­est to her.

"Sen­sa­tion­al as this sto­ry may be, it is but a glob­al am­pli­fi­ca­tion of the re­lent­less in­tim­i­da­tion of T&T jour­nal­ists that has be­come rou­tine."

She said there was hard­ly a jour­nal­ist or news­room in T&T that had not been the sub­ject of pro­fuse cy­ber­bul­ly­ing, phys­i­cal as­sault, ridicule, mock­ery, threats, po­lice ac­tion, in­tim­i­da­tion or trolling.

Ram­per­sad added that the si­lence of in­sti­tu­tions and the pub­lic had fu­elled this dan­ger, de­spite calls from MATT since 2015 for in­creased pro­tec­tion of jour­nal­ists.

Giv­ing an ex­am­ple, Ram­per­sad point­ed to "the on­go­ing den­i­gra­tion of GML’s Busi­ness Ed­i­tor Cur­tis Williams and whistle­blow­ers, as he cov­ered sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic-in­ter­est con­cerns at the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) and oth­er jour­nal­ists can re­count mul­ti­ple ex­am­ples of in­tim­i­da­tion."

She said GML’s state­ment against the cy­ber­bul­ly­ing of Ram­per­sad (Shar­lene) was a wel­come in­ter­ven­tion from her em­ploy­er.

Ram­per­sad opined if there was one good that can be re­alised from Mi­naj’s melt­down, it was the in­ter­na­tion­al fo­cus cre­at­ed by the rap­per on ques­tions about con­trol of in­for­ma­tion, re­stric­tions on free speech, and scruti­ny of the main­stream me­dia’s cov­er­age of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

She elab­o­rat­ed that Mi­naj’s orig­i­nal post res­onat­ed with anx­i­eties of peo­ple around the world who felt they were not be­ing told the whole sto­ry about ei­ther the virus or vac­cine and who saw the me­dia as com­plic­it in ma­nip­u­lat­ing in­for­ma­tion.

Ram­per­sad said pub­lic dis­trust was an­swered by man­dates and oth­er im­po­si­tions, fur­ther alien­at­ing pop­u­la­tions and gen­er­at­ing greater dis­trust.

She added that the con­tri­bu­tion of In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira in the Sen­ate last Fri­day on Iver­mectin made the point in his ques­tion “Why is in­for­ma­tion be­ing dis­tort­ed, sup­pressed and dis­missed?”

Ram­per­sad de­clared that this ug­ly episode touched many im­por­tant is­sues in con­tem­po­rary jour­nal­ism, among them the role of jour­nal­ists them­selves in serv­ing the pub­lic with di­verse facts and per­spec­tives.