Address by MWAG's
President: Michael Bascombe
Dear Colleagues,
We are once again
observing Media Week after another year of challenges and achievements,
and at a time of hope that deserves our continued vigilance.
Our colleagues continue
to work in media organizations that are under-funded, under-resourced
and still too susceptible to political and advertiser pressure.
Our organization will continue to seek ways to ensure that our members –
the practicing journalists – are exposed to more training and other
career-enhancing activities.
However all those will
be either stunted or undermined, if the practicing journalist do not get
the continued encouragement and support from their various work places.
We are worried about
the guidance – or lack of it – that our members get on their jobs to
ensure that they become better professionals.
That having said, each
member must ensure that they push against these odds and be responsible
for their own professional development.
There must be a greater
yearning to do it right – and to do it better.
Even in the best
situations, there is so much your management can do; and there is so
much our organization can do.
In the coming year,
MWAG will push to get more training opportunities for its members.
MWAG is collaborating with local and regional tertiary institutions to
secure training for members. Our Education Committee is nearing the
completion of negotiations with The T.A. Marryshow Community College (TAMCC)
on the establishment of an associate degree programme.
We hope that by the
next Media Week, the programme will indeed be up and running.
We are also pleased to
announce that CARIMAC – the media training department of the University
of the West Indies – has included MWAG on its programme of specialized
training initiatives for next year. It means therefore that CARIMAC
could provide tailor-made training in various areas for media
practitioners in Grenada.
Indeed we look forward
to the coming period with expectation and hope.
MWAG’s members will
have organization-issued ID cards that will not only identify them as
members of our organization, but will be used for special discounts and
privileges at participating businesses and associations.
The first batch of ID
cards should be available at the end of the month.
Grenada is expected to
be among Eastern Caribbean countries joining the Caribbean Single Market
at the end of the month.
The developing single
market and economy provides its own challenges and opportunities.
We are however
disappointed that our members have not taken advantage of the Skills
National Certificate, which has been designed to facilitate media
workers who might want to go to other CARICOM countries to seek
employment.
We invite our members
to ensure that they get one of those certificates.
In the last few years
we have made some significant gains, but there is still a long way to
go.
Our journalists are
gaining more respect, but there is still a gap, because, even within the
limitations we can operate, we can sometimes produce more-researched and
informed and more balanced work.
The threats, against
which we have sometimes fought so openly against, are still lurking out
there. They have not gone away. Only that in some cases they have become
more subtle and more sophisticated.
The same forces that
have been seeking to control the news flow, are still working at it. It
does not come in open confrontation anymore.
Instead it comes in the
form of license and economic pressures. It also comes in the form of
these forces who hire their own journalists, paying them from their own
pockets, and having them planted in our respective newsrooms to ensure
that certain sides of any national argument is not heard.
This state calls for
even more vigilance.
In an open
confrontation, we know the various sides of the battle. In this new
dispensation, the lines are more blurred.
With the explosion in
radio stations operating in Grenada, it appears as if there is a new era
of expression and freedom mushrooming at home.
We cannot let the basic
statistic make us drop our guards, because in many cases it is the same
forces at work.
The government still
does not have a transparent and understandable system for issuing or
denying radio and television licenses, and there has been a strong
suspicion that political patronage – rather than any media and broadcast
standards -- is what guides those decisions.
Indeed for the media in
Grenada to remain free, we call on the government to set up an
independent body to review and issue radio licenses, based on a broad
policy that is published and understood by all the players.
Anything short of that will leave licensed stations susceptible to the
type of pressures that undermine the freedom of the media
What we do need is not
just more media houses – but more media houses that are free of all the
inherent pressures they have now.
