Former Jamaican Information Minister slams Stabroek News for wrong and malicious use of his comments to contextualize its deceptive narrative on press freedom

While the government of Guyana continues to make strident efforts to expand and strengthen the policy framework for a conducive environment within which the Fourth Estate can function unabated, unhindered and without fear in keeping with constructional provisions and international conventions, it’s becoming apparent all over again as the country approaches another election cycle, that some media houses would rather straddle an adversarial continuum with the people’s government and would continually stoke imaginary peeves and non-existent duels to underpin their unethical agenda.

Our government has been at pains to expand its accessibility for the media, strengthen the framework for access to information, and build capacity across the board to enable individual and collective growth in the sector.

Our Access to Information Act has been in existence for over a decade; our government consistently facilitates access to the media through a multiplicity of channels including weekly high-level press conferences from the Vice President and General Secretary of the ruling party, periodic press conferences and regular ad hoc facilitation of access to the Head of State, and unfettered access to ministers within their offices and in the fields.

A plethora of policy documents, agreements, contracts and other public information are widely available across multiple digital platforms and more are provided on request almost weekly.

Our Department of Public Affairs has established an academy for up-skilling and certification of the entire media fraternity in international industry practices which was recently bolstered further by open access to the Coursera for Government platforms which provide expanded non-fees access to courses across the board.

We’ve been placing the matter of Press Freedom and its attendant issues front and center in the public domain, with full involvement of the media fraternity each year during international observances.

Digital media enjoys unrestricted freedoms save and except for actions that infringe on existing laws, and we continue to guard against any attempts to undermine these provisions or subvert constitutional protections and guarantees, universally.

Yet, at every juncture, without necessity and cause, some sections of our national media fraternity seem bent on keeping a jaundiced narrative alive, that which paints an entirely opposite picture to the facts as outlined above and the general environment within which they operate in Guyana, for whatever particular localized reason and seemingly to keep an apparent campaign to impact Guyana’s international credentials negatively in the algorithms and selected sources feeding the annual ranking mechanism done by the custodians of the Media Freedom Index.

In the latest exercise of its unfettered freedom, four months after Guyana’s observance of World Press Freedom day 2024 which saw the in-person participation of then Minister of Information of Jamaica Honorable Robert Nesta Morgan, the Stabroek News has found it strangely convenient to pull up limited and selected parts of the ministers comments during the activities in Guyana to somehow contextualize another of its missives designed to continue framing the Guyana Government as antithetical to the international conventions on press freedom.

In these newest efforts, the article published on September 9th, captioned “Press Freedom Rankings can be improved with more Government Transparency”, Morgan’s generalized comments, “The most powerful antidote to dishonesty is transparency”, which he made while in Guyana in May of this year, were used as context for Stabroek News’s revisiting of the 2024 global media rankings released back in May, which had Guyana dropping several places on the index.

In preparation for this article, Stabroek News contacted the Jamaican minister on the question of press freedom rankings and he again reiterated in a generalized sense as he intimated back in May, that in his view, “Transparency is the oxygen of democracy. Governments have nothing to fear [if they] are open and clear”.

But having used those comments along with anecdotal references and views Minister Morgan expressed while in Guyana, to contextualize its article, it appears that there is a deliberate angling by the paper which creates the impression that the Jamaican minister was chiding his Guyanese counterpart for the country’s drop on the index.

In response to this glaring ethical breach, Minister Morgan today released a statement in reference to the Stabroek News article, stating emphatically “At no point did I make a specific statement regarding Guyana… I find the story lacking context and wrong and it should be withdrawn. It essentially uses my speech to create a narrative I never said”.

The article highlights among other things, Minister Morgan’s reference to the existence of an Access to Information Law in his country, without drawing any parallel to a similar legislation which has been in place in Guyana for over a decade, as if to imply, as was done with several other references to Morgan’s comments; that Guyana’s situation vis a vis media freedom, is found wanting.    

Guyana and several other countries have argued that the assessment of press freedom at national levels to inform the global ranking is fundamentally flawed. Given that democracy in itself is a multidimensional and multifaceted feature that underpins open societies, the analysis of the democratic interplay between governments and the media cannot be viewed only through the perspective of the government’s relations and treatment of the media, as reported by the media, the analysis must be conducted both ways on the spectrum.

It cannot be that media practice in a national context remains devoid of scrutiny, with its ethics and professional conduct being entirely immune from criticism, while government’s actions alone vis a vis the media are constantly placed under the microscope. We insist, that on a democratic continuum, all actors that serve the public’s interest must face equal scrutiny.

In this extant situation, Stabroek has not only pursued its unfair criticism of the government, but has sought to impugn the good name of a minister of another government. In all instances of unfair and unethical journalism directed towards our government from any section of the local media, we will retain our right to respond and defend our credentials and record. Meanwhile, in the interest of the preservation of all aspects of our democratic ecosystem, the private media in Guyana must return and stick to unjaundiced professional practice as required by the conventions that underpin its global ethos, and leave politics exclusively to political parties.

Minister within the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for Public Affairs and Information, Kwame McCoy.

Monday, September 09, 2024.