December 31 – Let me extend best wishes for a productive, safe and
enjoyable 2008.
This
network of journalists and media workers became six years old in
November. Evidence that we fill a real void in the sphere of Caribbean
media has come not only via the regional and international recognition
we have achieved, but also through the sense of community we have been
able to build.
For
example, when we met in Trinidad, under the leadership of Dale Enoch,
for our various meetings on December 4-6, there was a level of
camaraderie and friendship our institutional partners in that exercise
found inspiring and exemplary.
The
thing is, we are in fact building a community of professionals along
lines that defy the undoubted requirement to formalise and to install
firmer organisational structures.
Though the latter imperative becomes the focus of our attention over the
next two years, we would do well to continue deepening and widening the
process of developing this community across borders.
Today, colleagues from Trinidad and Tobago, St Lucia, Haiti, Suriname,
Jamaica, Grenada and Antigua & Barbuda sit on our executive committee –
a design, unlike suggestions to the contrary, not contrived by any
notion of territorial equity.
We
have also done our work largely on our own with some help from friends
who have demanded nothing more than the fact that we stay together.
Our
engagement has not been time-bound by contract or project funding and
there has been no single, exclusive financial benefactor. This means we
have remained independent and free.
Our
executive members have all contributed voluntarily to the work of the
organisation – even though so many of us are freelancers with no fixed
source of income.
Bert
Wilkinson, Peter Richards, Deby Nash, Jerry George (SVG) and Michael
Bascombe come to mind as they have all contributed selflessly to the
cause as freelance journalists serving on our executive committee.
Bert, for example, had served on every single executive committee
between 2001 and 2007, when he decided not to seek re-election at our
last Biennial Assembly. His work in leading a one-person mission to
Haiti in 2002 was a high-point of our early activities and is favourably
remembered by colleagues there. His experience and skill as a journalist
were also assets he brought to the process. Thank you, Bert.
We
have aligned ourselves with the Rory Peck Foundation, based in the
United Kingdom, which looks exclusively at welfare and safety issues
associated with the work of freelance journalists. In 2004, for the
first time ever, the ACM was able to convince the Foundation that
natural disasters should be considered a source of professional distress
for freelance journalists and the Foundation offered assistance in the
case of Grenadian journalists affected by Hurricane Ivan.
The
point was reinforced in Jordan when I attended the first Global Forum
for Media Development in October 2005 and, together with Jean Claude
Louis of Haiti, urged participants to consider that vulnerability to
natural disaster is as urgent a matter for the small-island and
low-lying coastal regions of the Caribbean as are the threats of
political and criminal violence that specifically target media
enterprises and journalists.
For
example, the effects of the 2004 hurricane season severely disabled mass
media operations in Haiti and Grenada and dislocated journalists and
other media workers. Media-specific international aid resources should
therefore extend beyond the current inclination to focus only on
violence against media workers.
The
coming year will see an ACM that is much more focused on matters of
internal organisation and consolidation. We plan to become legally
incorporated, establish a small secretariat in Trinidad, re-design and
configure our web presence, regularise the processes for the acquisition
of regional media passes, apply for formal membership of the
International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX), which monitors free
expression issues globally, and re-visit our constitution and code of
ethics.
Several projects are also currently in the making. They include two
online courses on Digital Media and Investigative Journalism. The
Digital Media course should, in collaboration with the Knight Center for
Journalism in the Americas, be ready for offer by March. The
long-awaited Investigative Journalism course should commence by
July/August, we hope. These follow two highly successful exercises in
2005 and 2006 and a third, limited offering in 2005 in Spanish.
We
are also compiling our State of the Caribbean Media Report II
(2005-2007) and are currently awaiting submissions from Barbados and
Jamaica. It is hoped that a draft will be prepared for submission at a
workshop on Media and Governance hosted by the Inter-American Dialogue
in Washington DC on January 15, 2008.
Our
Mentoring Programme for Young Caribbean Journalists is being developed
and is being put up for project funding and should be launched early in
the new year. Prospective mentors have been notified and we will soon
begin pre-screening for a cadre of protégés for a pilot of this
important project.
We
are also developing a project to produce an Elections Handbook for
Caribbean Journalists. The idea has already received favourable feedback
from prospective benefactors and a team is being assembled to manage the
research and production processes.
On
the invitation of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), we recently
submitted a prospectus for the staging of a regional media workshop on
West Indies cricket designed for journalists who do not cover sport.
This
forms part of our overall campaign to maintain contact with a variety of
regional institutions and to establish our bona fides as a
representative regional organisation. Such recognition is already
extended by the CARICOM Secretariat and regional and international
organisations active in the Caribbean. Some of these include: OAS, PAHO,
ILO, UNESCO, UNIC, UNDP, IICA, CARDI, CTO and CEHI.
Similar initiatives are now envisaged for the Organisation of Eastern
Caribbean States (OECS) and CONCACAF.
In
the meantime, we do not plan to take our eyes off the challenge of
threats to freedom of the press.
We
note with concern recent regulatory developments in Antigua and Barbuda
- to be replicated, we understand, throughout the OECS - which have the
potential to impose new levels of censorship in the broadcast media. The
challenge of Trinidad and Tobago’s proposed broadcasting code is not
dissimilar.
In
Guyana, the continuing state advertising boycott of the Stabroek News is
being viewed in the context of official action to stifle dissent and to
punish recalcitrant media. Its impact on the practice of journalism in
Guyana is yet to be fully examined, but the prospect of substantial
reductions in advertising revenue will no doubt have the potential to
steer media coverage along more conservative editorial lines.
In
Jamaica, we need to keep an eye on proposed revisions to defamation
legislation being considered by a multi-sectoral team which includes the
Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ). This is a move in the right
direction but one that needs to be delicately negotiated to ensure that
ad hoc reform of one branch of media law is not accepted as absolute
acceptance of all other regulatory conditions affecting media. In the
process, as well, we would expect that the Government of Jamaica also
use the opportunity to remove criminal defamation from its statute
books. This would set a highly positive precedent throughout the
Caribbean and the Commonwealth as a whole.
Throughout the region, we also look forward to more consistent
application of the freedom of movement provision of the Revised Treaty
of Chaguaramas which specifically grants such rights to media workers.
The expulsion of Vernon Khelawan and Lennox Linton from Antigua and
Barbuda earlier in 2007 provided evidence of a lack of commitment to the
principles under which such a provision was embraced both by
international treaty and domestic legislation.
CARICOM Skilled National Certificates as they relate to media workers
are not being consistently recognised in the region. There are now media
workers with skills certificates from more than one country. Certainly,
this was not the original intention. To insist that media workers apply
for certificates from their adopted countries, IN ADDITION TO
certificates granted by their home countries is absolutely inconsistent
with the original design of the free movement provisions of the Treaty.
I am
amazed that more journalists have not taken this up as a valid story. It
is a travesty and amounts to official sleight of hand to re-introduce
the notion of a work permit. CARICOM countries need to decide whether
they want this or not. The ACM did not participate as a member of the
Advisory Council to the Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on the CSME with
this in mind and the current procedure does NOT have our blessings.
In
collaboration with the International News Safety Institute (INSI), the
ACM will work with SOS Journalistes-Haiti on the hosting of a workshop
on journalistic safety early in 2008.
I
also want to pay special tribute to our Assistant General Secretary, Guy
Delva, whose work as
head of the
Independent Commission for Supporting Investigations into Murders of
Journalists (CIAPEAJ) is already producing favourable results in Haiti.
Our
work is cut out for us in 2008. Thank you for your support. Thank you,
Dale, for an ACM that remains strong and united.
Wesley Gibbings
President
