Mediating in the media landscape

Dec 16, 2017 Editorial, Features / Columnists

It is not irregular for some national leaders to intervene on behalf of one company or another. In this highly competitive world, many companies would hire lobbyists to seek after their interests. In the United States, there are lobbyists in just about every corridor of the Congress.
Their task is to lobby the Congressman to procure contracts or to push through some legislation that would suit one business or the other. In Guyana, with its small population, the lobbyists come in the form of people who have close association to political leaders or people in the corridors of power.
ExxonMobil has come out of an environment in which it would probably have lobbyists on its payroll given that there are often many changes in the field of operations. There were lobbyists who desperately sought a lower penalty for a major oil spill.
In Guyana, one would expect the oil company to seek people in the corridors of power, regardless of which government is in power because it wants the best of everything. For starters, the company has a very good relationship with Guyana’s Foreign Minister to the extent that it could actually seek to have the Foreign Minister intervene on its behalf with Kaieteur News.
This relationship was not developed overnight. ExxonMobil exchanged notes with the Foreign Minister from the first sign that the Kaieteur News would revisit its shortcomings in other countries in which it operated. There was the comment that in other countries, the criticisms would come after the start of operations, not before. In Guyana, the criticisms came ahead of oil production because there was need for the politicians to be aware of the pitfalls.
Kaieteur News took the position that it should alert the government and the people to some of the indiscretions of the oil company in many countries. The newspaper recognised that Guyana lacked the monitoring capability in the face of international occurrences. For one, Guyana was pushed to recruit negotiators.
With help from the international community, Canada and the United Kingdom included, it set about planning its future using the earnings from oil. But there was much more; this country needed to be in a position to monitor the production so that it could ensure its fair share from any profit-sharing venture. Kaieteur News is on a mission to ensure that Guyana does everything to get the maximum returns from its partnership with ExxonMobil.
The Foreign Affairs Minister, at the first instance, chided the newspaper for what he called its reports on the oil company. At the same time, the oil company seemed leery of the press. It declined to participate at a public forum because of the presence of the media.
The upshot of it all is that the criticisms seem to be taking a toll on the oil company so there has been this approach to the Foreign Affairs Minister. As can be expected, the Foreign Minister then plays the role of an intermediary by appealing to a reporter to halt the attacks. No newspaper worth its salt would take kindly to being dictated to, so the Minister may have taken a step too far. Meanwhile, the oil company for its part has made no approach to the ‘offending’ newspaper.
The issue here is that ExxonMobil, unlike most companies making an entrance into a country for the first time, has not met with the press. It might have done itself a world of good had it sought to pour oil on the troubled media waters. No Foreign Minister is a worthy surrogate.

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