Latest update May 22nd, 2026 12:38 AM
Information control
(Kaieteur News) – For years, this newspaper has warned that media freedom in Guyana is being hollowed out, not through dramatic censorship or the shuttering of newsrooms, but through something far more subtle and dangerous: the steady strangulation of access to information.
What we are witnessing today is not an accident of governance, but a calculated retreat from accountability. The right to freedom of expression means little if journalists are denied meaningful access to those who wield power. In Guyana, official access has been replaced by performance. Press conferences have become tightly scripted affairs where difficult questions are unwelcome, follow-ups are prohibited, and journalists are reduced to passive spectators. This is not transparency; it is political theatre.
Successive governments have understood that controlling information is as effective as controlling the press itself. The current administration has perfected this tactic. The weekly post-Cabinet press conference, once a central pillar of public accountability, has quietly vanished. In its place, Guyanese are fed selective pronouncements, often delivered at political party headquarters or through carefully managed appearances that allow no room for interrogation.
Guyana now stands out in the Caribbean not for openness, but for opacity. Heads of Government across CARICOM routinely submit themselves to questioning by the press. Here, the highest offices appear shielded from scrutiny, as though public accountability were a burden rather than a democratic obligation.
Equally troubling is the continued dysfunction of the Access to Information regime. A law that was meant to empower citizens has been rendered toothless through neglect and obstruction. Requests go unanswered. Timelines are ignored. Oversight mechanisms appear dormant. Information that should be routinely available is treated as a favour to be granted, not a right to be respected.
National data—whether census figures, crime statistics, or governance information is hoarded as though it were proprietary. This newspaper has long argued that when a government treats public information as private property, it signals insecurity, not strength.
It is within this broader context that the recent statement by the Guyana Press Association must be understood. The GPA did not invent these concerns; it articulated what journalists and citizens have experienced for years. Its warning that journalism is being suffocated by “curated access” and “information control” echoes this newspaper’s own editorials in recent times.
The danger lies not only in what is withheld, but in what is substituted. Choreographed “pseudo press conferences,” pre-selected questioners, and staged interactions are now presented as evidence of openness. They are nothing of the sort. The government’s defenders often point to the number of media houses as proof of press freedom. This is a shallow argument. Media plurality without access is meaningless. Freedom of expression without information is an illusion.
As Guyana enters a period of unprecedented economic change driven by oil wealth, the stakes could not be higher. Decisions made today will shape the country for generations. Such power demands scrutiny, not silence. Yet instead of expanding access, the state appears intent on narrowing it.
Democracies do not collapse overnight. They erode gradually, through normalised secrecy, institutional silence, and the slow marginalisation of independent scrutiny. Each denied question, each ignored request, each choreographed appearance chips away at the foundation.
The media’s duty is to resist this erosion not for its own sake, but in service of the public. Journalism exists to ask uncomfortable questions, to demand answers, and to ensure that power is exercised in the open. A government confident in its governance welcomes scrutiny. One that fears it manages access, controls information, and hopes the public will confuse performance with transparency. Guyana deserves better than that.
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