Government eschews business practice

Oct 06, 2009 Editorial

The managers of the Kaieteur News are never the people to complain about Government excesses. As a newspaper which has earned the right to represent the interest of the people of Guyana, Kaieteur News always monitors developments and where necessary, highlights the shortcomings.
We have had cause to query many things— from the use of excessive force by the law enforcement authorities, to abuses of privilege. We have examined what we perceived to be corrupt practices and reported on them; we have done reports of people who need help but who could not access the people in authority to alleviate their situation.
We have taken up their cause and we have been able to help them. However, we have noticed that when we conduct certain investigations we are slapped with lawsuits, most of them designed to frustrate rather than seek some form of redress for wrongs published. We always try to take principled positions on issues regardless of our personal views as was the case of the advertisement issues involving Stabroek News. To this day there are those among us, not least among them the publisher of this newspaper, who firmly believed that the newspaper should have come out against the government in the advertising issue. The principled position was that no government is compelled to give advertisement to any media entity. Although the money is taxpayers’ money, the government must not be pressured to dispense with that money by the weight of public opinion or through some means other than purely business.
To his credit, President Bharrat Jagdeo signaled that he was prepared to run Guyana like a business and that he would ensure that every cent is well spent. He announced that his government was by duty bound to advertise with the state media and that his government would have to use the most popular of the private media to place advertising.
President Jagdeo argued that the popularity of the media, in this case the newspaper, would be determined by the circulation figures. And so it was that he justified placing Government advertisements with Kaieteur News, to the exclusion of Stabroek News. It made business sense.
In the business world, people place their advertisements where they are most likely to get the greatest coverage. Events that have the widest possible viewers attract the highest priced advertisements. Sometimes, we in this corner of the world wonder at the cost of such advertisements and whether, after advertising, whether the company would even recover its advertisement investment.
Within recent times, however, we are being led to question whether the government is keen on shrewd business practices as it once adumbrated. Nothing has changed in relation to the circulation figures with the main newspapers. Kaieteur News is still the largest selling newspaper in Guyana and so reaches the most readers. It would certainly make sense to advertise with Kaieteur News. Today the government holds a different view.
Ever since the Stabroek News issue, a new newspaper has emerged on the scene. It is still to make an impact among local readers. Some consider its readership negligible—barely passing 4,000 copies per day.
However, it is either the owners of that newspaper are closely allied to the government or they are being supported by the state. There has been no record of any approach by the owners of Guyana Times for financial support from the government yet from the volume of advertisement being pumped into that newspaper one would be forced to arrive at any conclusion except one that the government is operating in the best interest of the country when it comes to spending public funds.
Indeed, Kaieteur News attracts the least volume of Government advertising. Even Guyana Times with a circulation that matches the volume of newspaper that the Kaieteur News would dispense as complimentary copies gets more Government advertising than Kaieteur News. There are those among us who have concluded that this decline in government advertising is due to the news reports on what the newspaper considers over-priced contracts.
If that is the case then the government is petty to say the least, or very vindictive. If it is the former then that would be unfortunate. If it is the latter then we do not care.

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