Media and the elections

Jul 25, 2025 Editorial, News

Kaieteur News – In this election season, it is hard to distinguish whether the state media and some other privately-owned entities are really arms of the ruling and opposition parties or are truly independent truth seekers.

At public rallies and even on social media state media operatives are seen dressed in party colours, cheering on leaders of various parties and even openly campaigning. Some of them their faces have graced billboards endorsing candiates in the election race.

In any healthy democracy, the press must serve as a watchdog, bold, fair, and independent. But in Guyana today, an unsettling pattern has emerged, more and more journalists are finding themselves entangled in the webs of political power. Some willingly. Others, perhaps, unconsciously. The result: a slow erosion of public trust, truth, and transparency.

Guyana’s political landscape is deeply polarised, and the media has not been immune to its gravitational pull. In recent years. We have said here before that a troubling number of journalists and media houses have aligned, some overtly, others more subtly with the ruling political party. This alignment has created a dangerous feedback loop: party loyalty is rewarded with access and visibility, while the real press, the company of authentic professionals, has been locked out, hidden from, treated to a different standard.
All this is happening while the government boasts about press freedom. The best that can be said of this boast, is that it is a lower, more worrying standard of the press; the worst is that it has been no standard at all, save for the unacceptable ugliness, for the obscene that exceeds civilized limits.

The PPPC Government is the leading culprit in the excesses meted out against the press and overt attempt in capturing willing reporters. 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.

What we are witnessing today is not just political favoritism; it is a subtle but effective capture of the fourth estate.

This “capture” does not always involve overt censorship or bribes. Sometimes, it is far more insidious: jobs promised in government ministries; strategic contracts for media professionals; offers to host partisan radio or television programmes; quiet funding of newsrooms in exchange for editorial loyalty. These acts chip away at the very foundation of journalistic integrity.

The danger lies in what is lost: critical voices, unbiased reporting, meaningful investigation. When reporters become mouthpieces or echo chambers for the party line, journalism ceases to be a public service, it becomes propaganda.

Worse still, the public loses its compass. In a country already scarred by ethnic divisions and political tribalism, biased media deepens mistrust and disinformation. When citizens cannot rely on the press for fair reporting, they retreat into echo chambers, feeding cycles of suspicion, anger, and division.

The light of truth is the best disinfectant, as it has been wisely said, and it stands unbowed and unfazed before any and all comers. Unfortunately, this has been a conspicuously missing ingredient in some of our media houses today.
Ultimately, the freedom of the press is not just a journalistic concern. It is a democratic one.
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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