* From Stabroek News

'Running for election incompatible with mission of
working journalists' - media panel -Stabroek News
report criticised

Thursday, August 3rd 2006
 
 The Independent Refereeing Panel monitoring the local
media's elections coverage has frowned on journalists
jumping on the political bandwagon, saying it could
damage public confidence in their impartiality.

"Running for election is incompatible with the mission
of working journalists engaged in the gathering and
reporting of news," Independent Refereeing Panelist
Lennox Grant wrote in a new report, while noting that
signatories to the Media Code of Conduct have signed
up as election candidates.

A number of prominent journalists have appeared on
candidate lists for the parties. Former NCN anchor
Natasha Waldron and former Stabroek News sports
reporter Steve Ninvalle both appear on the PPP/C list,
while former Evening News reporter Roy Babel is on the
PNCR-1G slate. Evening News publisher Anthony Vieira
is also on the PNCR-1G list.

The report notes up to 10 working media people had
signed up as election candidates. But it says the
public is entitled to expect from the media news that
is credible and bias-free and stands to be
disappointed if reporters and presenters are
politically aligned to the extent of being party
standard bearers and candidates. It also points out
that the Media Code of Conduct signed by media houses
obliges media people "to hold themselves independent
and free of any, or all, control and direction from
any of the political parties registered to control the
elections." As a result, it noted that those
candidates who are also media owners are bound under
terms of the Code not to use their publications or
broadcasts for campaigning and clearly to separate the
news from political comment.

Meanwhile, Stabroek News' report on the PPP/C's
Nomination Day parade was also singled out by the
panel for containing an unverified assertion that the
ruling PPP/C had paid at least one participant to
appear in the party's contingent. The story contained
a claim by a woman that she had been paid $3,000 to
don a PPP/C jersey.

Grant's report says the story fails the test of
fairness and simple professionalism. "The newspaper
reported no attempt of its own to substantiate the
woman's claim, and instead gave gratuitous publicity
to a damaging assertion related to a sensitive
political question," the report explained. It adds
that remarks attributed to the editor in the July 28
edition compounded the offence by misleadingly stating
that "a Stabroek News reporter quite properly
investigated the matter and reported on it." Further,
the report notes that the story is still to be
retracted or substantiated and the editor was quoted
as dismissing the PPP/C complaint as "the usual
election campaign rhetoric."

Stabroek News Editor Anand Persaud last evening
pointed out that while there was an implication that
it was the PPP/C that had paid the woman, this direct
allegation was not made in the news item. He also
noted that the words "the usual election campaign
rhetoric" referred not to the PPP/C complaint about
the Nomination Day reportage but to the PPP/C's
description of Stabroek News as an "opposition press".


The Grant report also notes the subsequent
condemnation of that Stabroek News story by PPP/C
General Secretary Donald Ramotar as well as the
condemnation of the daily as an "opposition newspaper"
both by the President and the PPP/C's general
secretary. Grant's report said the PPP/C leaders went
way beyond denunciation of that instance of reckless
reporting by the Stabroek News to impute political
motives to the paper, assailing it as an "opposition
press". It noted that in an election campaign, the
temper of exchanges will inevitably become heated, but
it also said the PPP/C's over-reaction to the story,
to the extent of accusing the paper's publisher of
plotting politically against the ruling party, sets an
ominously bad precedent of ad hominem attacks capable
of lowering the tone for the rest of the campaign.

Another incident that attracted the attention of the
panel was the staff at the Government Information
Agency (GINA) wearing party T-shirts at the PPP/C's
Berbice rally last Sunday, thereby openly identifying
themselves with the party.

The report says the staff's appearance in ruling-party
electioneering garb is consistent with the findings of
GINA's political alignment published in the June
report of the Media Monitoring Unit.

The Unit had warned that using the agency for party
political purposes is, in a democracy, an abuse of the
position of the incumbency. Grant's report adds that
"the undisguised identification with the ruling party
defeats any claim to professional performance of an
information service for the state-as distinct from the
party for the time being in control of the machinery
of state."