Election year in Guyana can resonate with harsh rhetoric. The past five years have witnessed not only the most extravagant elections campaign in history but also the most flagrant exploitation of the state media. Evidently, the state-owned media have been mobilized to wage wars to ‘weaponise’ news as a way to eternalise the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Administration’s memorialization of current events. State media ought to “…represent the views of all political actors in a fair and balanced manner” but, in Guyana today, they have been whetted into weapons of mass disinformation.
Former President David Granger, speaking on the programme – The Public Interest – called attention to the PPP administration’s agreement to the Declaration of Chapultepec since May 2002 emphasising its commitment to freedom of the press and free speech and declaring, at that time, that it “…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.”
The evidence suggests, contrarily, that the PPP’s record has been one of hostile attacks on the independent media which opposed the government’s views including denying state advertisements to the Stabroek News; banning a Capitol News journalist from attending press conferences at the Office of the President; shutting down Channel 6 Television station for four months and politicising the state-owned media. The PPP’s aim has always been to project only a self-absorbed memorialization of current events.
The former president cited the World Press Freedom Index − compiled by Reporters sans Frontières-RSF – which reported that Guyana’s performance declined by 17 places in the press freedom rankings in 2024. Further, he cited the International Press Institute’s report that state-owned and -controlled media compete with the private media, complaining: “Independent and opposition media outlets struggle to compete with the advertising revenues of pro-government media outlets, which threatens their economic viability.”
Mr. Granger pointed out that the PPP, in office for 28 of the past 33 years, controls the Department of Public Information, National Newspaper Ltd’s Guyana Chronicle newspaper, National Communications Network radio and the Regional Public Broadcasting Service with unmatched reach to the hinterland’s Aishalton, Anna Regina, Annai, Bartica, Lethem, Linden, Mabaruma, Mahdia and Orealla. The state manages a massive media enterprise, employing over 300 persons and expending $1.25B (for NCN) and $1.7B (for the DPI) of state funds in five years.
The PPP administration manipulates the state media which disseminate highly partisan and prejudicial information by selectively slanting the news against the Opposition and substituting innuendo and invective for information. The state media, generally, ignore or report Opposition Parliamentary debates and press conferences only in a negative light. Opposition parties, personalities and policies are fiercely assailed without a semblance of impartiality. Any objective assessment of statements of the state-owned media would expose its verbatim regurgitation of political content and partisan ‘agitprop’ in the guise of public information.
The former president expressed the view that Guyana is in the throes of ‘memory wars’ being waged by the state to ensure that only its peculiar memorialization of current and historical events – however implausible – forms the official record. Policy and practice show that the state media have mobilised information to embed the PPP’s place in history.
The sad consequence of state control of the media has been to distort public information, diminish democracy and impede development. Present and future generations deserve to have access to credible information of current events not as a ‘war’ between Government and the Opposition but as a means to safeguard their own constitutional right to freedom of expression and to protect the population from discrimination and domination. 󠄀
