THE MEDIA IS A FAILURE

Feb 05, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The decision of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) to resuscitate its Media Monitoring Unit (MMU) is self-flattering. There was nothing fantastic about that unit after the experts left and in fact, the method by which it had begun to arrive at judgments about media content may have exaggerated certain trends within the media.
How does, for example, simply counting the number of pro-government or anti-government stories speak to the issue of balance within the media. The State media would be expected to have a high proportion of stories about government’s development, but does this necessarily mean that the state media is biased.
The judgment of bias has to relate not to the degree of coverage given to developmental initiatives but rather to the limited coverage given to opposition concerns. Thus simply monitoring a newscast and classifying stories according to which one gives a more favourable indicator of the government or the opposition is simply going to produce statistics which can be meaningless.
If it is the contention that fair media coverage relates to fairness of an election, then what is required is more than just tabulations about media content. What is required is for emphasis on developing a professional code within the media itself in Guyana and we know that has been one of the most difficult challenges.
The problem is not just the state media which is bad enough; the problem is also within sections of the private media which can be viciously anti- government.
What is needed is not a permanent media monitoring unit under the auspices of the Guyana Elections Commission. What is required is a permanent media oversight body committed to improving standards and ensuring balance and objectivity of all media houses.
To leave this role to a MMU within GECOM is self- defeating because no MMU within GECOM is going to transform the media in Guyana outside of election season, and this is why there had been calls in the past for not only a permanent media oversight body, staffed by professionals from outside of Guyana, but also for the media in Guyana to begin a process of self-regulation which has not happened and which is not likely to happen in this election year when extremes within the media usually become the norm.
Oversight goes beyond monitoring. It also sets standards allows for an agreement on those standards and enforces sanctions for breaches of those standards.
An MMU simply monitors and reports what it has found. It has no enforceability, and does not create standards which can be agreed to by the media houses. This is why a permanent oversight body should have been established.
However this has not happened because within both the private media and state there are so called professionals who are more political than the politicians themselves.
Guyana has not moved forward since the last group of experts was brought here in the run up to the 2006 elections.
That arrangement needed to become a national undertaking rather than simply an initiative which happens in the run up to elections because the media culture in Guyana is not going to change unless there is a commitment by all media houses to respect the judgment of a media observatory body comprised or respectable professionals from outside of Guyana.
The work of an MMU can support these professionals by providing some empirical measures which can be used to support the judgment of the professionals, but no one is going to take the reports of any MMU out of the Guyana Elections Commission seriously unless there are independent professionals overseeing the work of the unit.
That work of those professionals should have been continued so as to develop a professional media culture in Guyana. This may have led to a situation within a few years where for example a media complaints authority could have been instituted so that persons who have problems with media coverage could have had recourse including those who feel that some newspapers and electronic media houses are not balanced.
What should have happened was that when one set of media experts left, another should have replaced them because the presence of these experts and that fact that the media was being scrutinized by them would have allowed for higher professional standards.To simply now therefore institute a media monitoring unit makes no sense. What is needed is long term plan to ensure that the media is continuously monitored by experts from outside whose judgment it is going to be difficult to impugn and whose findings can help lift the standard of journalism in Guyana.
GECOM may therefore have good intentions when it says that it would like to see an MMU being resuscitated but unless this body is part of a nation process then it will make no sense and to become a national process means experts from overseas must be brought in to evaluate media content.
Self- regulation of the media has failed in Guyana. The media in Guyana is divided. There are worrying levels of lack of professionalism within the media in Guyana and the media houses themselves have failed to ensure an improvement in standards.
The private media has to set a better example. It has to be more balanced and objective because when it does it will alienate the state media and allow for the development of improved standards. As things stands both the private and state media are guilty of the same offence and this is not going to be corrected by some mechanism which GECOM hopes to resuscitate.

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