Fighting the journalist

Dec 01, 2012 Editorial

The life of a journalist is perhaps the most hazardous when one considers that the journalist has to go behind the scenes to bring the stories that help fashion a country and keep the various governments in check. It is common knowledge that governments resent the exposure journalists give them unless the exposure is about those things that the governments want highlighted.
Even in the most democratic of countries, there are issues that governments would want to keep hidden. For example, there was the planned invasion of Cuba back in 1961, with support from the United States government under President John Kennedy, a group of Cuban exiles decided that they were going to invade Cuba.
History would record that it was doomed to failure. A reporter got wind of the planned invasion and of some of the details that involved both the United States and Nicaragua. The reporter was told that while the authorities could not stop him from publishing his story, he could cooperate by not going to press. The reporter chose the latter. The government was happy then but later, President Kennedy was to say that he regretted seeking the non-publication of the information.
The reporter has often been the one to report on subversive acts by their governments and in the process, many were killed or jailed for long periods. In the United States, when two reporters with the Washington Post got wind of actions by the Richard Nixon Government, they broke what later became known as the Watergate Scandal. The actions by these reporters forced President Nixon out of office.
In Guyana, reporters broke the lid on what turned out to be corruption of gargantuan proportions. Needless to say, the government was not and still remains unhappy at the exposures. Fortunately for the journalists in this country, they are not hounded by the state or killed in the execution of their duties.
It is this determination to expose those things that governments wish to hide that led a group to the Central Intelligence Unit set up by the government. This unit has been in the air for a long time. It was supposed to be the repository of the video footage provided by the cameras installed across the city.
The nation was told that the government and the law enforcement authorities would have been able to trace hijacked vehicles because in real time they would know whether it left the city. The nation was also told that these cameras would help detect criminal activities in and around the city. But this has not been the case.
Reporters investigating the Unit managed to walk all the way into the heart of the Unit, to the embarrassment of the government. The result is that the government has called in the police. This has happened before during a previous administration. When a group of reporters entered a Guyana Sugar Corporation facility to investigate storage of what was deemed to be a dangerous drug, thallium sulphate, they managed to breach the security.
This was not a criminal act because there was nothing to prevent admission and the courts duly freed the reporters. Similarly, when some reporters happened to enter an unprotected crime scene the police decided to charge them for their (the police) own lack of proper measures. Again the courts let the reporters go.
The harsh reality is that the reporter is the most visible person in the society, even more than the politician. He is also the most feared and often the most disliked, sometimes by the very people in whose interest he works.
Many have been banned from certain institutions because they dared to be fearless. This is going to continue for as long as there are reporters and governments. On this occasion, the government is contending that its investigation hinges on the fact that the reporters allegedly told someone that they were entering the compound with the permission of the Home Affairs Minister.
Even if they lied, lying is not a crime except in certain conditions. For the government to seek to have the reporters placed in police custody is surely a case of excessive authority.
We know of extreme cases where governments shut down media houses because the reports do not coincide with the likes and dislikes of the government. Guyana should not sit by and allow any effort to silence the journalist. This attempt to have the police investigate them is threatening.

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Fighting the journalist

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