Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley brought more in­trigue to a re­cent de­ci­sion on me­dia ac­cess to his brief­in­gs at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, when he an­nounced that he will now on­ly be invit­ing main­stream me­dia to said events in fu­ture.

The Prime Min­is­ter made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's "Mix and Min­gle" gath­er­ing at the Wa­ter­front on Mon­day night, which iron­i­cal­ly was in­tend­ed to net­work with some of the very me­dia pro­fes­sion­als who may be os­tracised by the de­ci­sion.

At the time, the PM was re­spond­ing to the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T's (MATT) calls for a de­fined pol­i­cy re­gard­ing me­dia ac­cess to such brief­in­gs. This came in the wake of a com­plaint by Robert Amar, who owns a ra­dio sta­tion, that he was de­barred from at­tend­ing last week's COVID-19 me­dia brief­ing, de­spite hav­ing at­tend­ed pre­vi­ous ses­sions of this na­ture dur­ing the height of cov­er­age of the COVID pan­dem­ic over the last two years.

PM Row­ley was clear in an­nun­ci­at­ing that his pol­i­cy will be to choose main­stream me­dia hous­es for such events, in­sist­ing es­sen­tial­ly that he re­serves the right to de­ter­mine who is in­vit­ed to press brief­in­gs be­cause not every in­di­vid­ual who la­bels them­selves me­dia is en­ti­tled to an au­di­ence with him at such fo­rums.

Now while we can­not take of­fence with the PM's de­ci­sion to se­lect a me­dia pool, as does even the White House in the Unit­ed States, we are find­ing it hard to fath­om his jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the same at this time.

This is be­cause the PM has of­ten de­fend­ed his ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to the me­dia dur­ing his tenure. So, while the PM may be able to chal­lenge a call of de­nial of press free­dom in this par­tic­u­lar case, the ques­tion that aris­es is why has this is­sue cropped up now and is seem­ing­ly tar­get­ed at spe­cif­ic in­di­vid­u­als.

We al­so note that in the con­text of to­day's me­dia land­scape, main­stream and new me­dia are al­most on lev­el play­ing fields in some cas­es and, more im­por­tant­ly, al­low al­most sim­i­lar abil­i­ties to dis­sem­i­nate in­for­ma­tion to the pub­lic, which we be­lieve should al­ways be the Gov­ern­ment's main in­ten­tion.

As such, the PM's call would seem ar­bi­trary at best, es­pe­cial­ly since his ar­gu­ment seems to be di­rect­ed to­wards in­di­vid­u­als who are "lead­ers of po­lit­i­cal par­ties, can­di­dates, spon­sors of vul­gar­i­ty and in­sults."

In fact, it would seem that the PM is re­al­ly try­ing to sep­a­rate the me­dia sheep from the goats as it were, since it is al­so clear, from his ar­gu­ment, that he be­lieves there are many in­di­vid­u­als now pur­port­ing to be "me­dia" via new me­dia plat­forms, which in­di­vid­u­als he is seek­ing to fil­ter out of his brief­in­gs.

This is why this me­dia house is join­ing MATT in call­ing for a prop­er­ly de­fined pol­i­cy for ac­cred­i­ta­tion to cov­er the PM's me­dia brief­in­gs. Ac­cess by in­vi­ta­tion, in the man­ner the PM now sug­gests, is not an op­tion.

In­deed, all bonafide jour­nal­ists seek­ing to cov­er such events should be giv­en ac­cess to these events. Any­thing less would, in fact, open the PM up to a ques­tion of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices and put paid to his very sug­ges­tion that there is a free press in T&T.