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Jagdeo says he was wrong to withhold State ads from newspapers
By Kemol King
Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo believes that it is wrong for a Government to withhold state advertisements from newspapers, further acknowledging that this was a practice his Government carried out when he served as President.
Before making this admission, Jagdeo had discussed the importance of certain international conventions on democracy and good governance, and the role of media in policing abuses of state resources. The former President made specific mention of the state’s media arms, the Department of Public Information (DPI), the Guyana Chronicle and National Communications Network (NCN), during a press conference yesterday, at the Office of the Leader of the Opposition.
Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo
A topical issue, in that regard, is an accusation made by Stabroek News, that Jagdeo’s Government withheld state ads from the private newspaper in 2006, in an attempt to punish it for affording the fledgling Alliance for Change (AFC) regular column postings. Stabroek News stated that the Jagdeo administration had refused to place a single state ad with the newspaper for 17 months, with no plausible explanation.
About the same period, Kaieteur News suffered a similar fate as Stabroek News as, according to KN’s publisher, Glenn Lall, the Jagdeo Government had also meant to stifle this newspaper for its principled reporting.
At that time, the then President Jagdeo had claimed that his decision was because of his Government’s intention to cost-effectively manage its use of state resources, and to explore other avenues for state advertising.
Asked about this accusation yesterday, the Opposition Leader said that his withholding of state ads was not for punitive reasons. He said that, as the most widely circulating daily newspaper, Kaieteur News had often received the lion’s share of state ads. However, in retrospect, Jagdeo said, notwithstanding the fact that his reasons weren’t punitive, “I think it’s wrong.”
Looking forward, Jagdeo said that, in the new Government, an arrangement should be made from which all private media can benefit from the disbursement of state ads.
He added that they should not be disbursed in a punitive manner. Stabroek News had pointed out that doing so would be in contravention with the Inter-American Press Freedom Declaration of Chapultepec. Principle 7 of that Declaration, signed by former President Jagdeo, in 2002, prohibits the granting or withdrawal of Government advertising to reward or punish the media or individual journalists – something that has now allegedly happened under both Jagdeo and the current Granger-led administration.
In this administration’s case, DPI had rejected the accusation from Stabroek News as “wholly erroneous, misleading and mischievous.”
The newspaper had, after study of ad placements in the four daily newspapers over the past six months, presented tabular evidence of the reduction of placements in the Stabroek News. One complication of the newspaper’s accusation was that, in May last, it had written to demand that DPI make a substantial reduction of the $22.1M debt stacked up by the Government’s public relations arm, or face rejection of its ads.
Stabroek News, Editor-in-Chief, Anand Persaud had told Kaieteur News, faced with the likelihood that the Government may be changed in the upcoming General and Regional Elections, that Stabroek News made the decision to ensure that it would have substantial debts paid off quickly.
Persaud also told Stabroek News that when the debt was substantially relieved, GPI wrote to DPI in July, notifying it that the normal flow of advertising could be resumed. It was at this point, that when the ad placements did not immediately bounce back within the ballpark of regular monthly placements, Stabroek News made its accusation based on ad placements made in August and September last.
DPI, in an extensive response, stated that it just didn’t receive the requests for placement of advertisements as Stabroek News had expected, and that that is directly a result of a series of events triggered by Stabroek News.
The Department of Public Information further stated that Government began to explore other advertisement options, with particular focuses on digital media and radio, in attempt to reach greater value on these platforms.
Persaud described this explanation as a fabrication to draw from the true political reasons for the reduction in ad placements in the Stabroek News.
Nevertheless, DPI stated that it has commenced a diversification of its ad placements, in-keeping with the evolving nature of media.
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