THE PPP AND PRESS FREEDOM

Jan 10, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The PPP can and should be excused. It does not know better and therefore cannot be expected to have offered any other explanation than the one it has offered in relation to press freedom in Guyana.
The PPP idea of press freedom is liberalization. That is how it has defended its record of press freedom: by pointing to the fact that the mass media in Guyana is liberalized.
The PPP is dealing with numbers, small numbers, and vacuous statistics. The PPP would have us believe that the State has a minority presence in the mass media. It throws out the number of private newspapers, the number of private television stations and the number of private radio stations as evidence of its liberalization of the mass media. And then it translates this liberalization into respect for press freedom.
It has not told the whole story. In fact, the PPP statistics tell very little of the narrative of the media in Guyana.
It does not, for example, indicate that most of the private television stations that existed prior to 2011 were given their licenses not under the PPP but under the PNC, and that was more than twenty years ago.
Prior to 2011, the PPP refused to grant new radio and television licenses arguing that there was a need for legislation to be put in place.
Even after the Court of Appeal ordered that the government consider applications for licenses, the government continued to move at a snail’s pace with these applications. When it did consider licenses for radio it handed these out to its friends and cronies with only a few private individuals being granted licenses for what amounts to village radio stations. The greater transmission reach was handed to friends and cronies of the government. Liberalization was perverted to hand out the better licenses to its friends and cronies.
These additional licenses now make it seem as if the State has a minority presence in the mass media. But this is far from the truth in a small country like Guyana.
In such a small country and with liberalization only coming late in the day, state advertisements for example is very important to the survival of the mass media.
And these ads, as is well known, have been selectively distributed favouring those media houses that are perceived as being close to the government.
For all the boast about press freedom, the PPP is yet to offer a justification for denying this newspaper state ads during the first ten years of its existence. But another newspaper aligned to the PPP was able to get state ads less than a few years after it was formed.
It was only after this new newspaper was established that the PPP reversed its policy-based on a sound economic rationale–of withholding ads from the Stabroek News. It is widely believed that the only reason this policy was reversed was so that the new newspaper could benefit from state ads, something that its circulation did not justify.
The PPP believes that it is smart and everybody else is stupid. The people however were never fooled by the PPP.
Liberalization of the media in Guyana cannot be translated to press freedom. Indeed it can be forcibly and convincingly argued that liberalization has effectively been used to pervert press freedom by denying licenses to deserving recipients.
The State may be a numerically a minority presence in the mass media but the government now has access to almost every home in Guyana through its policies of favouring its friends and cronies in the media and through the granting of cable licenses.
The government can dictate what you see not just because of the reach of the State media but because of the reach of its friends and cronies that now have broadcast licenses, including cable.
The government can suffocate the media by withholding ads. It tried that with Kaieteur News. However, Glenn Lall was determined to wean his newspaper off of dependency on the government. And so he neutralized the discriminatory policy of the placement of state ads.
Unable to financially cripple the Kaieteur News, the PPP has now resorted to the most despicable methods against the Kaieteur News, including threats and intimidation.
The PPP has gone after this newspaper and its publisher. They are out to silence Kaieteur News. By this singular conspiracy, the PPP has demonstrated that what exists in Guyana today is a tyranny against the media.
Let the world know that the party of Cheddi Jagan is a ruthless oppressor against press freedom.

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