CARIBBEAN: New Media Watchdog Set to be Unleashed

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Dec 2 2002 (IPS) - More than a decade after the collapse of the Caribbean Press Council, (CPC) plans to establish a new regional media watchdog have at least one journalist wondering whether his colleagues are pandering to recent criticisms by some political leaders.

The Eastern Caribbean Press Council (ECPC) is to be launched in St. Lucia on Jan. 25, after discussions involving senior media practitioners from the member states of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Barbados, Jamaica, and the Bahamas over the past two months.

A statement issued at the end of the Grenada meeting Nov. 9 said that the editors had fine-tuned a Draft Code of Ethics and that the final document would be called ‘The Code of Practice for Caribbean Journalists’.

”This code is to be circulated to editors and publishers in Barbados, Grenada, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Dominica, Montserrat, Antigua, St. Kitts-Nevis and the British Virgin Islands. A copy will also be sent to the OECS Secretariat,” the statement said.

Sources said the code is now being printed for distribution ahead of the formal inauguration of the ECPC in Castries.

The president of the Trinidad and Tobago-based Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM), Wesley Gibbings, said while he welcomed the move towards establishing the ECPC, he was also worried that regional journalists were being cowed by regional leaders..

”Media managers appear to have decided to take pre-emptive action against the looming threat of direct intervention by OECS governments,” he said, adding, ”it is good that such an option is being explored by the industry on its own, so long as it does not signal a willingness to subsequently submit to any new regime of official regulation”.

The move to establish the ECPC follows June’s announcement by the OECS that it would create an ”OECS press complaints commission to investigate complaints against the press and take appropriate disciplinary action”.

A statement issued at the end of the OECS summit said that the governments had accepted a proposal by St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves that contained three specific measures:

First, a freedom of information act on government handling of information; second, a press complaints council ”to investigate complaints against the press and take appropriate disciplinary action”, and third, ”a common privacy act, which will safeguard the privacy rights of individuals against intrusions of unscrupulous and over-zealous media”.

The statement noted that Gonsalves’ proposals came in the wake of ”recent attacks on the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Mr. Lester Bird”, including the release of a videotape of a 14-year-old girl making ”unsubstantiated claims of misconduct by Mr. Bird and other senior government officials”.

In the videotaped interview the girl told journalists that she had sex with the prime minister and accused him of international drug trafficking.

Earlier this month, Grenada’s junior Minister of Information Mark Isaac criticised the media in his country for exposing the public to "incomplete, distorted, misleading and in some cases markedly vindictive reports".

Speaking at the annual Media Week organised by the Media Workers Association of Grenada (MWAG), Isaac said that too often, reports are aired or published before a particular issue is thoroughly investigated to ensure all aspects are presented in a balanced fashion.

One Grenada newspaper recalled it was not the first time that Isaac had criticised the country’s media. Two years ago, he labelled it ”garbage and trash”.

Gibbings, a sometimes contributor to IPS, warned that "however painful the perceived assault on good taste and judgment in some quarters, we must also resist the temptation to divide ourselves along questionable lines of moral and professional superiority and to impose insidious forms of editorial control from amongst our own ranks”.

Trinidad and Tobago is the only Caribbean country with a functioning media complaints council, according to veteran journalist and former head of the now defunct Caribbean Media Workers Association, Rickey Singh.

He said that Guyana is in the process of establishing a similar mechanism and that media owners and editors in Jamaica were currently "considering various options for fostering and upholding valued journalistic professional standards".

Barbados, the Windward Islands (Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines,) and the Leeward Islands (Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts-Nevis and Montserrat) will each have one representative on the seven-member ECPC council, according to the organisers’ statement.

It will also include a representative each of the region’s publishers and journalists and one from the OECS Secretariat, as well as a chairperson of ”known competence and integrity”.

CARIBBEAN: New Media Watchdog Set to be Unleashed

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Dec 2 2002 (IPS) - More than a decade after the collapse of the Caribbean Press Council, (CPC) plans to establish a new regional media watchdog have at least one journalist wondering whether his colleagues are pandering to recent criticisms by some political leaders.
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