GNBA to seek international help to monitor airwaves during elections - Sobers

GNBA to seek international help to monitor airwaves during elections – Sobers

Oct 20, 2019 News

Chairman of the board of the Guyana National Broadcasting Agency (GNBA), Leslie Sobers, recently said that the agency will be seeking international help to monitor broadcasting during the upcoming elections.

Chairman Leslie Sobers

This announcement was made on Thursday at a press briefing in the boardroom of GNBA’s headquarters on Lamaha Street, Georgetown. The briefing was held to address a number of issues that have surfaced in the media.
One of the main issues clarified was that MTV and Freedom Radio were not sanctioned and fined for comments against the president during which they called him a charlatan.
Sobers said that Freedom Radio and MTV were fined because they were in non-compliance with the regulations which pointed to the Broadcasting Act. Between January 2019 and September 2019 Freedom Radio committed a total of 26 infractions.
It was on this basis that GNBA will be seeking the international help to prevent so many infractions from taking place.
“In a few short months we will be entering into a phase and in Guyanese reality we may see even more things of this nature [infractions] happening and on that score GNBA is seeking external assistance to monitor our airwaves.” Said Sobers.
He added that GNBA will be giving certain keywords to their contracting party so that they can be programmed into a computer and the computer will just give a report on a daily basis if such words are used during a broadcast.
In addition, Sobers said GNBA is entering into negotiations with the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) and GECOM, when it starts its media monitoring unit, for conjoined efforts to monitor the airwaves during the elections period.
The Chairman said that those agencies have a wider media mandate than GNBA in which they monitor newspapers, public meetings. However, at his end they will render assistance in relation to television, radio and cable.
While Sobers highlighted that the agency is still in talks with the international persons, he disclosed that they have received interest from the United States and Trinidad. There are also companies with indication from Europe.
Further mention was made that the assistance can be sourced from Jamaica and Barbados however GNBA is looking in terms of cost, speed and the type of service they are willing to provide to gear their selection of an international assistant.