Shas­tri Boodan

Me­dia hous­es are be­ing asked to cough up as much as $6500 to cov­er goat rac­ing in To­ba­go on the Tues­day af­ter East­er.

This was an­nounced by the Buc­coo Vil­lage Coun­cil, the en­ti­ty run­ning the event on Wednes­day at the Buc­coo In­te­grat­ed Goat Rac­ing Com­plex.

Win­ston Pereira, the vice pres­i­dent of the vil­lage coun­cil, said the me­dia has ben­e­fit­ed from free con­tent for years and it was about time they pay up.

Ear­li­er this week, the vil­lage coun­cil sent a fly­er via What­sapp stat­ing that a meet­ing would be held on Wednes­day and the me­dia would be re­quired to walk with mon­ey to pay fees.

Pereira said a fee of $6500 would be de­mand­ed for videog­ra­phy, $1500 for pho­tog­ra­phy, $1500 for videog­ra­phy for news, and $1500 for pho­tog­ra­phy. Pa­trons en­ter­ing the event with pro­fes­sion­al look­ing pho­to/video equip­ment would be asked to pay the ac­cred­i­ta­tion fees. How­ev­er pa­trons will not be fined for tak­ing pho­tos and videos with their cell phone.

Pereira said the coun­cil needs the mon­ey since the lim­it­ed num­ber of peo­ple at­tend­ing the event does not bring in enough cash at the gates to cov­er ex­pens­es. Keigon De­noon, the re­cent­ly in­stalled pres­i­dent of the vil­lage coun­cil said the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly was asked for a to­tal of $180,000 in spon­sor­ship of the event. He said the THA has so far com­mit­ted $30,000 of pub­lic funds to the event.

De­noon was asked if the vil­lage coun­cil would con­sid­er charg­ing park­ing fees or cut­ting back on the free ad­mis­sion, eats and drinks dis­trib­uted to the per­sons in the VIP sec­tion. De­noon said, "There is no VIP and free­ness. Let me de­bunk that state­ment im­me­di­ate­ly.

We give com­pli­men­ta­ry tick­ets to our spon­sors, you would agree why that is done. If you give me a spon­sor­ship of $30,000 for me to give you 5 VIP bands, that is a ba­sic way of say­ing thank you. It's a drop in the buck­et to the spon­sor­ship we re­ceive. So the no­tion of the num­ber of free­ness that hap­pens we could de­bunk that one time. When the THA brings in VIP guests it's be­cause they would have paid us for the seats they oc­cu­py as well. In terms of the food and stuff they cov­er that. That is not some­thing spon­sored or fund­ed by the Buc­coo Vil­lage Coun­cil."

When re­porters showed up at the event they were told that the vil­lage coun­cil want­ed to have a dis­cus­sion with the me­dia about the fees.

The vil­lage coun­cil was lat­er ad­vised by mem­bers of the me­dia that re­porters at the event were not au­tho­rised to speak on be­half of the man­age­ment of the me­dia hous­es they rep­re­sent­ed.

Pereira an­nounced his dis­plea­sure that the What­sApp fly­er was made pub­lic via so­cial me­dia by a mem­ber of the me­dia whom he did not name.

He said, "I was very dis­ap­point­ed the way it was char­ac­terised and the re­spons­es that came af­ter be­cause I am sure that every­one here is ful­ly aware that when one has a copy­right for an event ac­cred­i­ta­tion fees are stan­dard. In oth­er words you all need con­tent and for a very long time be­fore we were copy­right­ed, all the me­dia hous­es got con­tent for free and aside for get­ting it for free, it's not an in­dict­ment on you all, I know its a busi­ness you run, I am a busi­ness­man, I un­der­stand that.

Whilst you all are run­ning this con­tent and I'll tell you from per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence over the time I have been here, me­dia hous­es would reach out to us and would sug­gest all kinds of things on the day to set up, to have cov­er­age to stream and every­thing and on top of that they are charg­ing us. Charg­ing us for some­thing that is ex­clu­sive­ly ours. I think that was an im­bal­ance."

The meet­ing at one time got heat­ed as the vil­lage coun­cil rep­re­sen­ta­tives tried to avoid ques­tions per­tain­ing to funds and the last minute de­ci­sion by the vil­lage coun­cil to in­flict fees on the me­dia.

Kan­dace Jack­son, the Vice Pres­i­dent of the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (MATT) who is al­so a re­porter for To­ba­go Up­dates, lat­er told Guardian Me­dia, "As some­one who not on­ly rep­re­sent­ed my me­dia house at that meet­ing but al­so as the sit­ting VP of MATT, I al­so felt very dis­re­spect­ed, very at­tacked that none of the ques­tions that we asked were prop­er­ly be­ing an­swered.

The re­spons­es were very dis­re­spect­ful and we were be­ing talked down to. The way that the re­lease orig­i­nal­ly went out, the de­mands that went out were very much out of the blue. It was nev­er told to us that it was a dis­cus­sion. I at­tempt­ed to reach out to Mr Pereira af­ter we got the re­lease for some clar­i­fi­ca­tion and he did not pro­vide that clar­i­fi­ca­tion. All he said it's up for dis­cus­sion." Jack­son said she did not ap­pre­ci­ate claims by the vil­lage coun­cil VP that mem­bers of the me­dia lied and dis­trib­uted wrong in­for­ma­tion when all that was done was based on the re­lease.

"Fees were sup­posed to be paid at the meet­ing (ac­cord­ing to the re­lease) there was no in­di­ca­tion that there was sup­posed to be a dis­cus­sion about the fees," she said.