Regional Press under attack
“Tensions between Prime Minister Basdeo Panday and the media reached new heights after Julian Rogers, a popular television journalist from Barbados, was denied a work visa and forced to leave in May. Hundreds of demonstrators chanted, ‘Panday must go’ and ‘Rogers must stay’ as Rogers boarded a plane out of Trinidad. At a November 8 political rally, Panday urged his supporters to ‘treat [the media] as political opponents who are out to destroy us.’ Several of Panday’s followers took the pronouncement literally and roughed up reporters covering the event.
“In 1997, the Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago (MATT) defeated a proposed press law backed by Panday that would have required journalists to report with ‘due accuracy and impartiality.’ “There were widespread protests in April after the government refused to renew a visa for Rogers, who had worked in Trinidad and Tobago for five years. His early morning talk show, ‘Morning Edition’, often featured guests who were critical of Panday and the ruling United National Congress (UNC).
At one point, Panday accused Rogers of deliberately screening callers to exclude UNC supporters. MATT described the expulsion of Rogers as a violation of an international agreement which permits Caribbean journalists to work in any country in the region without applying for a visa. “In rejecting Rogers’ work extension, the government argued that Rogers had been granted annual visas to work in Trinidad and Tobago legally since 1993 on the condition that he train a local journalist to ‘assume his duties’.” © Committee to Protect Journalists December 31, 1998 Although the former PM of T&T, Mr Panday has many exceptional qualities, his attitude towards the media as the enemy is consistent with most of our sitting Prime Ministers.
I can never forget the sickening feeling I had as a rookie reporter watching a senior colleague being expelled from a country in his own region against every ideal of a united Caribbean and of free movements of goods and people envisaged by the founding Prime Ministers Errol Barrow of Barbados, Forbes Burnham of Guyana, Michael Manley of Jamaica and Dr Eric Williams for T&T when they signed the Treaty of Chaguaramas on July 4, 1974.
Eight years after the Julian Rogers debacle in 2001, a revised Treaty of Chaguaramas establishing the Caribbean Community, including the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME), was signed. Under Article 46 of the Revised Treaty, the following categories of Caricom nationals have the right to employment in any of the participating Member States: Media Workers, University Graduates, Artists, Musicians, Sportspersons, Nurses, Teachers, Artisans, Holders of Associate Degrees, Domestic Workers, Agricultural Workers, and Private Security Officers. Yet the fourth estate, a right to information and a free press across Caricom, is continually threatened by individual states.
As far back as 2012, regional journalist and press freedom activist Wesley Gibbings warned that only three Caribbean Community and Common Market (Caricom) countries—Belize, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago— had access to information laws. Gibbings sounded alarm bells on the “trend” across Caricom “to attempt to impose restrictions on expression via official secrets and data protection legislation and to apply official regulation in the context of internet content.” Gibbings wrote with prescience in 2012: “Challenges to press freedom and free expression in countries of the Caribbean, therefore, span a complex variety of direct and insidious phenomena. These include overt state hostility toward media enterprises, a heritage of restrictive legislative environments, the commandeering of media content by commercial and special interest groups, the corrosive effects of systemic self-censorship and general public apathy.”
As current examples to back Gibbings’ warnings, the T&T media has engaged in a long watchful battle to ensure that the proposed Data Protection Act does not muzzle journalists. (It is currently delayed for 18 months and under other amendments under the watchful eye of the Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago (MATT). In Jamaica, the Gleaner recently reported that the principal director of the National Integrity Action (NIA), Professor Trevor Munroe, complained that “unscrupulous officials” have used the Official Secrets Act in the public sector “to intimidate public servants who may wish to report inappropriate conduct in ministries, departments, and agencies.”
Given the vulnerability of small island states that make up Caricom and the social and economic disaster that Brexit turned out to be for the UK, Caricom leaders must put aside narrow political interests. This anniversary must be used to redouble commitment to unifying the region. This ideal in our small democracies is impossible without a robust fourth estate that ensures checks and balances on behalf of the people of this region.
Ira Mathur is the President of the Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago (MATT)