The Guyana Press Association’s (GPA’s) condemnation of the attacks on a woman journalist and the President of the Association, herself a woman journalist, has heightened public concern about press freedom and the relations between the state and the media.
Former President David Granger, speaking on his weekly programme – The Public Interest – called attention to the significance of the attacks for the observance of ‘World Press Freedom Day’ on 3rd May.
He recalled that Guyana’s President emphasised the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) administration’s commitment to press freedom by signing the Declaration of Chapultepec in May 2002 saying, then, “My government has never, and will never, seek to victimise, punish or in any way target media organisations simply because they do not share the government’s view on an issue…”
Granger, however, cited the GPA’s concerns that attacks by PPPC officials encouraged threats to the lives and livelihoods media professionals and deplored earlier verbal confrontations in which journalists’ questions were openly described as “silly and stupid”.
The Association of Caribbean Media Workers had condemned earlier statements referring to journalists as “vultures and carrion crows”, declaring them as “inflammatory” and “designed to endanger the lives of media practitioners and their families.”
The former president is of the opinion that the PPPC’s actions − denying state advertisements; banning a journalist from attending press conferences at the Office of the President; shutting down a television station for four months; withholding Government advertisements from one newspaper for 17 months and politicising the state-owned news media – have been intimidatory.
He recalled that a woman journalist was suspended for one month for asking then Finance Minister at a press conference to clarify reports that the FBI (of the USA) was looking into money-laundering at his ministry.
Granger reminded that Article. 146 of Guyana’s Constitution assures citizens of their fundamental right to “freedom of expression”. He suggested that press freedom could be safeguarded by the GPA’s adopting a three-point policy of enhanced education, strengthened solidarity and steadfast social responsibility − including the principles of accuracy, accountability and ethical reporting.
Press freedom, Granger iterated, is a fundamental right, not a political favour.
