On Mon­day, dur­ing the course of my umpteenth or so we­bi­nar of the COVID-19 era, I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to share ob­ser­va­tions and dis­cuss ideas re­lat­ed to the im­pact of the pan­dem­ic on the prac­tice of jour­nal­ism in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

The event was host­ed by the Eu­ro­pean Union—Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean (EU-LAC) Foun­da­tion and in­clud­ed jour­nal­ists, aca­d­e­mics and press free­dom folks from Spain, Latin Amer­i­ca and my one­self from the Caribbean.

My open­ing state­ment em­phat­i­cal­ly set out to dis­tin­guish our sub-re­gion­al ex­pe­ri­ence from what was be­ing de­scribed by my coun­ter­parts in coun­tries such as Brazil, Mex­i­co, Pe­ru, Ecuador and Venezuela.

Our Span­ish mod­er­a­tors ap­peared keen on hear­ing me ex­plain that at no time Caribbean jour­nal­ists have been re­quired, so far, to re­port on cat­a­stroph­ic med­ical out­comes – as bad as it has been that in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean we have had sev­er­al fa­tal­i­ties.

But, nowhere in our re­gion, is there any­thing like what I heard about the tribu­la­tions of jour­nal­ists in Brazil and Venezuela (to cite on­ly two cas­es) in ac­cess­ing raw da­ta and in­for­ma­tion, re­port­ing faith­ful­ly on dread re­al­i­ties, and hav­ing ac­cess to the peo­ple and places where re­li­able in­for­ma­tion can be ob­tained. In some in­stances, jour­nal­ists are be­ing ha­rassed and even ar­rest­ed for do­ing their job, and col­leagues there fre­quent­ly iden­ti­fy a need for psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port.

This is ab­solute­ly not to con­tend that the pan­dem­ic has not ex­posed some rather nasty things about the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Caribbean jour­nal­ists, politi­cians and their prox­ies, and me­dia au­di­ences. Or that we have not had our share of per­son­al trau­ma.

In­stead, the ab­sence of the most ex­treme con­di­tions has pro­vid­ed us with clar­i­ty re­gard­ing the con­ver­gence of the lega­cy me­dia’s more dif­fi­cult chal­lenges—some of them in­ter­nal (we are far from per­fect), but most of them de­rived from the broad­er con­tes­ta­tion to com­mand the at­ten­tion of hearts and minds.

The thin­ness of the re­gion’s eco­nom­ic for­tunes, for ex­am­ple, has high­light­ed the fi­nan­cial fragili­ty of our me­dia sec­tor. With ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enue down be­tween 50 per­cent and 70 per cent, there have been lay­offs, salary cuts, re­duced pro­duc­tion and, in one or two cas­es, a full shift from tra­di­tion­al to dig­i­tal plat­forms.

Refuge in new and dig­i­tal me­dia by tra­di­tion­al news­pa­pers and broad­cast­ers is prov­ing not to al­ways be an easy op­tion. There are is­sues re­lat­ed to the mon­etis­ing of con­tent and busi­ness mod­els to as­sure ad­e­quate in­vestor re­turns in the midst of an en­vi­ron­ment where every­thing else is per­ceived to be “free.” Lis­ten out for a chal­lenge in Grena­da re­gard­ing the le­gal­i­ty of statu­to­ry no­tices post­ed dig­i­tal­ly, to cite one small ex­am­ple.

Mean­while, wit­ness the con­tin­ued emer­gence of shad­owy on­line con­duits for the free flow of po­lit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion.

Here are the rights of free ex­pres­sion with­out cor­re­spond­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Sim­ply de­vel­op a plat­form and start pub­lish­ing stuff. Any­thing. About any­body. How­ev­er legal­ly ac­tion­able re­main some breach­es.

The fact of a busy Caribbean elec­tions sea­son (nine elec­tions this year) ought to have al­so bus­ied us with ob­serv­ing how po­lit­i­cal op­er­a­tives have been at­tempt­ing to in­flu­ence the po­lit­i­cal nar­ra­tive.

We need to keep an eye on how par­ti­san el­e­ments have been em­ploy­ing eas­i­ly-recog­nis­able tem­plates to achieve their ob­jec­tives, in­clud­ing the use of mis­in­for­ma­tion as a weapon against tra­di­tion­al me­dia.

COVID-re­lat­ed fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties are thus now join­ing con­cert­ed ac­tion to un­der­mine the cred­i­bil­i­ty of our me­dia. This is hap­pen­ing in the midst of the threat of what some de­scribe as a “cap­ture” of the news agen­da by state au­thor­i­ties and pow­er­ful busi­ness in­ter­ests - fill­ing spaces left by ad­ver­tis­ers in re­treat.

The preva­lence of state me­dia with pock­ets as deep as na­tion­al trea­suries, to­geth­er with the strug­gles of weak­ened pri­vate me­dia now in­ten­si­fy the prospect of such “cap­ture.”

There is a new re­al­i­ty un­fold­ing for all of us. There are many who don’t think this bas­tion of democ­ra­cy is ca­pa­ble of serv­ing any use­ful pur­pose. They may not re­alise it yet, but they con­tin­ue to hold to such a be­lief at our con­tin­ued per­il as coun­tries and poli­ties.