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Press Freedom in Guyana

May 04, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The only thing that we should be saying about Press Freedom in Guyana is that it is present in all of its attributes, and that it is flourishing in this democracy.  It is our heavy duty to share with the nation that, rather sadly, nothing could be further from the truth, nothing more remote from the reality that the independent press coexists with in today’s Guyana.  Matters have deteriorated to such an extent in the local environment that even the hallowed diplomatic contingent from the West in Guyana found it compulsory to come out publicly and record the disappointments and disquiets of members.

It should be instructive of how bad things are, when the very countries that did so much to settle our political storms in 2020, are now prompted to speak to what has been becoming too much the norm in 2023 Guyana.  The list of abuses hurled at the independent press is long and troubling.  Though only a few entities qualify, by way of dedication to fearless duty, for the accolade of ‘independent’ their work has become increasingly endangered, and their existence squeezed into narrower and narrower corners.

The real press, the company of authentic professionals, has been locked out, hidden from, treated to a different standard.  The best that can be said is that it is a lower, more worrying standard; the worst is that it has been no standard at all, save for the unacceptable ugliness, for theobscene that exceeds civilized limits.  The PPPC Government is the leading culprit in the excesses meted out against the press, the jagged barbs that have become an inseparable part of the workbench of honest and hardworking journalists.  We at this publication should know, for our people have felt the brunt of the wickedness concocted, have been made special targets for what is grimy, what savages most claims of good governance, of ethical political leadership.

Yet the PPPC Government is not alone when pent-up furies are let looseon journalists.  A known PNCR activist leaned forward with hostile words and distinctive aggressive bearing against a State media reporter.  It is an awful testimony as to what is going on with the press in Guyana that political figures, or those operating under their sponsorship, have no qualms about going to any extreme, and venting their frustrations at not having it all their way.  It is not reflective of a healthy, confident democracy when members of the Fourth Estate come under relentless fire.

When leading members of a sitting Government find it comforting to seek out cooperative media operators to peddle their versions of purity and truth, then something is amiss.  The light of truth is the best disinfectant, as it has been wisely said, and its stands unbowed and unfazed before any and all comers.  Unfortunately, this has been a conspicuously missing ingredient in what has been delivered to the press in drips and drabs by the Government.  This becomes even more noticeable when government and leaders shy away from facing hard questions, and resort either to the deceptive or the outrageous in dealing with press people declared to be enemies and those who must be dealt with, taught hard lessons.  This has been the sordid case in Guyana when undaunted press people pursue the facts, persist in unraveling secrets.

Another reality faced by the independent press in Guyana is that truth is the first casualty of war.  The PPPC Government has declared a virtual war on the few professionals in the local media stream, who seek to get to the bottom of substantive developments in the oil and gas sector.  The full truths swirling there under shrouds of secrecy are defended with frightening determination, passion, and energy.  The result is that there has been consistent Government callousness intended to intimidate, to chase away, and to decimate the ranks of those pressing for truths and facts.  Not what bolsters government stories, and boosts the image of leaders, but what are of nothing but the fullness of truths and facts.

When press freedoms, freedom of opinion, and freedom to work, are all subject to escalating indignity, then what is in motion is not democracy, but the stealthy march of heinous tyranny.

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