I am cur­rent­ly the Deputy Man­ag­ing Ed­i­tor at Guardian Me­dia, re­spon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the news­gath­er­ing process and con­tent out­put. I al­so man­age the Dig­i­tal De­part­ment. Guardian Me­dia’s CNC3 leads all oth­er me­dia hous­es in T&T on Face­book, In­sta­gram, Twit­ter and Threads. I al­so help guide Guardian Me­dia’s pol­i­cy com­pli­ance (Code of Ethics, Print & Broad­cast Guide­lines, So­cial Me­dia, Er­ror Cor­rec­tions) and sup­port the ros­ter­ing, men­tor­ing and per­for­mance ap­praisals process­es. Be­tween 2005 and 2022, I served as; As­sign­ment Ed­i­tor; Pro­duc­er of The Morn­ing Show; Pro­duc­er of The CNC3 7 pm News­cast; CNC3 News An­chor; Ex­ec­u­tive Pro­duc­er; and Lead Ed­i­tor, Con­tent Dis­tri­b­u­tion of Guardian Me­dia.

How long have you been with the com­pa­ny?

I start­ed in June 2005, three months be­fore CNC3’s first broad­cast. I par­tic­u­lar­ly re­mem­ber the day I signed my con­tract and was giv­en a tour of the fa­cil­i­ty, the stu­dio and news­room were still be­ing built, and I had to wear a dust mask be­cause of all the work tak­ing place. It was quite an ex­cit­ing time know­ing that I was to be part of a new me­dia en­ti­ty in T&T. I had left CCN TV6 to be­come part of this new start-up sta­tion, to­geth­er with well-known me­dia per­son­al­i­ties like Rose­marie and Roger Sant, Shelly Dass and Car­la Foder­ing­ham, all of whom I worked with at TV6 as well. I took a five-month break in ser­vice from Oc­to­ber 2006 and re­turned in Feb­ru­ary 2007 and have been with the sta­tion ever since. Pri­or to our first broad­cast, we were busy build­ing a team of jour­nal­ists, cam­era­men and stu­dio crew, many com­ing from oth­er me­dia hous­es but some com­ing in as new to jour­nal­ism. It was a re­al­ly ex­cit­ing time as the new news­room was fin­ished. We were to be the on­ly me­dia house in the coun­try with a full chro­ma key set and I was able to play a part in ad­vis­ing on and tweak­ing the de­signs cre­at­ed by our graph­ics spe­cial­ist Hank Williams.

Hank Williams and Sampson Nanton after being awarded CNC3's first-ever Employee of the Year and Journalist of the Year, respectively, in December 2005.

First lo­go

A group which in­clud­ed Hank, Roger Sant, Rose­marie Sant and him­self sat down and looked at sev­en de­signs that Hank had built on what would form the lo­go for CNC3. “I par­tic­u­lar­ly re­mem­bered one that looked like a crick­et ball and for a while we con­sid­ered it be­cause our brand was to be strong not just on news, but on sport, en­ter­tain­ment and cur­rent af­fairs.”

First Voice Over/Re­port

Back then, we were wait­ing for the cam­eras to be cleared from off the port and when they came we de­cid­ed that we’d be­gin work­ing in gath­er­ing video footage across the coun­try that would be nec­es­sary for when we start­ed broad­cast­ing. At the time, we were test­ing the sta­tion so Hank had built some video loops with mu­sic that would play from time to time on the Ca­ble News Chan­nel Three fre­quen­cy. It so hap­pened that one year be­fore that, in 2014, I had been to Grena­da to cov­er the im­pact of Hur­ri­cane Ivan. So I was asked to go back to Grena­da to do a fol­low-up set of re­ports on the is­land’s re­cov­ery. When I re­turned with the re­ports, it was de­cid­ed that we would use those re­ports be­tween the loops and it there­fore gave me the ho­n­our of be­ing the very first voice to ever have been heard in this sta­tion’s fre­quen­cy.

Sampson Nanton announces the extension of the polls due to inclement weather during the coverage of the September 7, 2015, General Elections.

First Broad­cast

It’s some­thing I could look back at some time in my lat­er years and tell my grand­chil­dren, a great ho­n­our of be­ing the first voice ever heard on this sta­tion, and the first re­port. I par­tic­u­lar­ly re­mem­ber what was to be our first news­cast on Re­pub­lic Day 2005. We were all set and ready to go with quite a buzz across the news­room. Then, around 4 pm, the man­ag­ing ed­i­tor, the late Gren­fell Kissoon came in and an­nounced that the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) had stopped us be­cause of some­thing that need­ed to be sort­ed out. I was quite de­flat­ing but be­ing the ge­nius he was, the late Gren­fell Kissoon came up with the idea of tak­ing the scripts and pho­tos of our re­ports, and pub­lish­ing them in the Guardian news­pa­per the next day. So I al­ways laugh and say, CNC3’s first ever news­cast was on the news­pa­per.

The next day, Sep­tem­ber 25, 2005, we got word that TATT had giv­en us the clear­ance but Mr Kissoon want­ed us to hold back one more day to be ab­solute­ly cer­tain of every­thing, and so, on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2005, we broad­cast our first ever news­cast. It had a grand to­tal of just 30 sec­onds of paid com­mer­cials so we had to run a lot of pro­mos in our breaks. I’ve grown to see the sta­tion reach a place where there are so many paid ads that we have to do a bal­anc­ing act to en­sure we get our news con­tent prop­er­ly aired.

Jour­nal­ist of the Year

I was al­so ho­n­oured at the end of that year to be Ca­ble News Chan­nel Three’s first-ever Jour­nal­ist of the Year while Hank, quite fit­ting­ly, was named Em­ploy­ee of the Year.

Name Change

Three years lat­er we were giv­en a na­tion­al free-to-air li­cence and on No­vem­ber 1, 2008 we start­ed broad­cast­ing on to a wider au­di­ence who didn’t have ca­ble and we stopped call­ing our­selves Ca­ble News Chan­nel Three, go­ing in­stead by just CNC3.

Sampson Nanton carries a camera tripod while covering the devastating earthquake in Haiti in January 2010, in this photo taken by late former Guardian photographer Anthony Harris.

Anthony Harris

Day Time Ex­tra

We al­so did shows dur­ing the day. I re­mem­ber two that were very pop­u­lar at the be­gin­ning – a youth-ori­ent­ed show called Y2G, which stood for Youths for Two Hours with Giselle, host­ed by Giselle Legall and the Jaye-Q show, host­ed by Jaye Q Bap­tiste. Those shows were well-watched. And that was how we start­ed. Quite ex­cit­ing times in­deed.

Sig­nif­i­cant changes

Def­i­nite­ly the im­pact of the so­cial me­dia era.

When we be­gan in 2005, Face­book was just one year old and YouTube was sev­en months old. Twit­ter would come a year lat­er in 2006 and In­sta­gram in 2010. Video phones were al­so not com­mon un­til 2006 so tele­vi­sion news re­al­ly wasn’t com­pet­ing with video broad­casts across so­cial me­dia plat­forms. Peo­ple came to the me­dia for the source of news so what we cap­tured on cam­era were not be­ing seen any­where else be­fore it was seen by us. I’ve grown with that era, see­ing the breath­less speed at which con­tent is pub­lished on so­cial me­dia and month by month we be­gan to re­alise we had to be, above all, two main things

(i) the ver­i­fi­able source in an are­na where mis­in­for­ma­tion, dis­in­for­ma­tion and ma­l­in­for­ma­tion were reach­ing the au­di­ences first and

(ii) a dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed prod­uct that was rel­e­vant, in­for­ma­tive and con­tex­tu­al. We sim­ply couldn’t be broad­cast­ing the same things that peo­ple had seen all day long on so­cial me­dia plat­forms. I can tell you, it re­mains a ma­jor shift, the so­lu­tions of which are still be­ing worked out, and hav­ing been to sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al jour­nal­ism fo­ra, it is clear that this chal­lenge is a glob­al one for all me­dia en­ti­ties.

Thank­ful­ly, we were al­so first to lead on so­cial me­dia which helped us to build our plat­forms with a col­lec­tive reach of over 1.1 mil­lion and with gaps above our clos­est com­peti­tors, in the hun­dreds of thou­sands.

Sampson Nanton interviews soca artiste Machel Montano in 2016.

Favourite mo­ments

For me, it was in June 2013 when we got the mar­ket da­ta that placed us as num­ber one on Mon­days to Fri­days be­tween 7 and 8 pm dur­ing our news­cast and al­so dur­ing the 6-8 am slot, where The Morn­ing Show was tak­ing place. We knew all along that we were beat­ing our com­peti­tors but I will nev­er for­get the day we got the da­ta to prove it, we had a cel­e­bra­tion in the of­fice. Here was a sta­tion that had been chip­ping away year af­ter year at the more well-es­tab­lished com­peti­tor and just 5 years af­ter be­com­ing free-to-air we were able to cap­ture the hearts of news view­ers across the coun­try.

That aside, my favourite mo­ment in re­port­ing while at CNC3 was when T&T qual­i­fied for the World Cup on No­vem­ber 16, 2005. I was al­ready in the me­dia for nine years but noth­ing ever sur­passed that mo­ment, and hasn’t since. The erup­tion of joy and cel­e­bra­tion across the na­tion was sec­ond to none, and to be able to cap­ture that and be caught up the eu­pho­ria of that day, was one of the hap­pi­est mo­ments I ever ex­pe­ri­enced in jour­nal­ism. Look­ing back I am proud to have been able to be at the fore­front of record­ing a ma­jor part of this coun­try’s his­to­ry but on the day it­self, it was just so much hap­pi­ness.

Chal­lenges over the years

I’ve had to cov­er many sto­ries that lat­er put my life in dan­ger. I’ve known what it was like to get emails say­ing there is a bul­let with my name on it or to be walk­ing on In­de­pen­dence Square and have some­one tell me that if I ever come back up on the hill (Laven­tille) I wouldn’t leave alive. I al­so cov­ered the in­fa­mous ad­dress by the late Ja­maat Al-Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr, in which he de­mand­ed za­kaat from oth­er Mus­lim or­gan­i­sa­tions, that led to him be­ing ar­rest­ed and charged with sedi­tion, and was lat­er sum­moned by the court to be a wit­ness. It wasn’t the most com­fort­able of feel­ings hav­ing to stand in a court­room sur­round­ed by Bakr’s sup­port­ers and be­ing asked by the court to point out the per­son who I re­port­ed on. But I know vet­er­an jour­nal­ists who went through more than that, far more, so I drew from their ex­pe­ri­ences and sim­ply sol­diered on.

Sampson Nanton poses for a photo next to the 'Beasts', the nickname given to the limousines used by the United States president, outside the Hyatt on April 18, 2009. US President Barack Obama was at the time attending the Summit of the Americas, which the leaders of every country in the Western Hemisphere attended.

I al­so did an in­ter­view with a ma­jor gang leader who was sur­round­ed by 12 men all ful­ly armed, and who gave me so much in­for­ma­tion about the un­der­world and those in­volved, I knew the in­for­ma­tion in it­self put me at risk. I came to find out some years lat­er that I was be­ing shad­owed by spe­cial po­lice of­fi­cers for my safe­ty more than once, some­thing I nev­er knew at the time. Then there were times when politi­cians fed me mind-blow­ing in­for­ma­tion and doc­u­ments that were meant sole­ly to top­ple oth­er peo­ple.

Jour­nal­ism can be a very risky ca­reer. You have to know what ground you’re stand­ing on in this field. On the field, cov­er­ing the Haiti earth­quake was a big one, hav­ing to go there for a week, sleep­ing on bench­es in a school and hav­ing to car­ry food and wa­ter giv­en that noth­ing was avail­able there. The stench, the home­less­ness of the chil­dren, some of whom were just sit­ting around in the cap­i­tal cry­ing, the trac­tors and trucks dump­ing up to 70,000 bod­ies in­to a very mass grave, wit­ness­ing swarms of peo­ple over­tak­ing a truck that was car­ry­ing food and aid and leav­ing the dri­ver near to dead and hav­ing to speed past it for our lives and the wit­ness­ing of two peo­ple be­ing shot dead as law­less­ness pre­vailed, it took me months to ful­ly get over that ex­pe­ri­ence.

Guardian Media Deputy Managing Editor Sampson Nanton interviews South Korea's Prime Minister Han Duck-soo at Hilton Trinidad & Conference Centre, Port-of-Spain, in July 2023.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

What would you say sets CNC3 above the rest of tele­vi­sion net­works?

It’s al­ways been a fun place to work. As a new sta­tion, we had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to chart our own course and ex­plore our own way of do­ing things. We built a team from very ear­ly of young peo­ple who were ea­ger and pas­sion­ate about jour­nal­ism and had some se­nior ones at the top steer­ing the ship in the right di­rec­tion. But the news­room was al­ways full of jokes and laugh­ter. And as so­cial me­dia took off, we got in­volved in just about every chal­lenge that there was – The Ice Buck­et Chal­lenge, The Man­nequin Chal­lenge - we made it fun and we built part­ner­ships. Co-work­ers be­came friends at CNC3 and when we were down, we all ral­lied to­geth­er. I worked at two oth­er me­dia hous­es be­fore, but nev­er saw the lev­el of com­radery that I’ve seen at CNC3 over the years. And it was al­so very much a place of op­por­tu­ni­ty. We had in­terns who grew to make names for them­selves in jour­nal­ism be­cause we opened the doors for them to grow. It was al­ways the place to be. Some of the biggest names in the me­dia in re­cent times, have CNC3 to thank for that.

Your greet­ings on net­work an­niver­sary

I just re­al­ly want to say thank you to the hun­dreds of thou­sands who have played a part in CNC3 over the last 18 years. I re­mem­ber when I was leav­ing TV6, some­one laughed at me, say­ing I was stu­pid to leave an es­tab­lished na­tion­al sta­tion for a new ca­ble one. But look at where we are now, a house­hold name that has met and sur­passed our com­peti­tors in many ar­eas. That took a lot of work from us but of course, the great­est news sto­ry of all time mat­ters not if there are no view­ers. So in T&T, across the Caribbean and across the world who have par­tic­i­pat­ed in CNC3 as a view­er, ad­ver­tis­er, con­trib­u­tor or oth­er­wise, this is just as much your cel­e­bra­tion as it is ours.

Sampson Nanton, captured by the late former Guardian photographer Anthony Harris, during coverage of the Haiti earthquake in January 2010.

Guardian Media's Deputy Managing Editor, Sampson Nanton, greets President of The Seoul Times, Joseph Joh following discussions in Seoul, South Korea on September 5, 2023.