CJA E-letter www.cjaweb.org

Issue No 4 June 2004

Page 2 The agony of Zimbabwe

Page 3 Spin: the new Australian industry

Page 4 The threats to good reporting

Page 5 News in brief

US envoy wins CJA some headlines

The May conference launching the CJA’s Trinidad HQ hit headlines from the start, thanks to an attack by Roy Austin, the American ambassador, on the Trinidad media. They replied with gusto to his allegations of anti-American bias and unfairness.

At the opening of the conference’s media exhibition and the simultaneous launch of a new TV service, i.e.TV, university vice-chancellor Rex Nettleford described George Bush’s missionary zeal in Asia as a weapon of mass distraction. Austin (originally from St Vincent), who is a personal friend of President Bush, hit back, attacking the media and pointing to Bush’s $15 billion fund for fighting Aids.

The media also ran into criticism from Prime Minister Patrick Manning at the conference opening. He had seen many lives damaged by careless journalism, he said. Press freedom did not legitimise biased reporting, character assassination and the stirring of controversy under the guise of facilitating debate. Even if aggrieved people could get redress, the damage was already done. It was time for the media to get their act together. They needed to set high standards and codes of practice.

Prime Minister Manning thanked the CJA for putting its faith in Trinidad. In the past, traffic flowed from the Caribbean to London. Now it flowed the other way. “We in the Caribbean have come of age,” he said. CJA president Hassan Shahriar said the CJA wanted to get away from being a British-based organisation. He told Trinidad: “It’s your baby now.”

Leading media people from throughout the Caribbean, and CJA executive members from throughout the world, came to the conference at the University of the West Indies, held jointly with the Unesco-sponsored Conference of Caribbean Media. Seven women journalists came from Surinam. CJA executive director Sunity Maharaj organised the production of a new high-quality magazine CJR, the Commonwealth Journalism Review, with articles on journalism issues Commonwealth-wide.

The agony of Zimbabwe’s journalists

Trinidad journalists turned out in force for the conference dinner, held in the garden of the university principal, Dr Bhoe Tewarie. The chief guest, Nqobile Nyathi, editor of The Daily News, Harare, spoke of the pain of ending the employment of staff members made redundant by the closure of this independent paper by the Zimbabwe government. She said: “It was very hard for me and others to tell co-workers they were being made jobless at a time when it would be hard to find jobs elsewhere.”

A court decision forbidding the employment of unregistered journalists has forced the News to close even its popular website. The privately-owned papers still publishing in Zimbabwe have small circulations. With the closure of the News, the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, has no way of communicating its message to the mass of voters. “The government press publishes half-truths and downright lies,” said Nqobile Nyathi.

She outlined the draconian legislation – the Public Order Act and the Access to Information Act - which bore down on the News and its staff. “It has become the practice to pick up journalists on Friday evenings, so that they cannot get out till Monday. They are held in cells not fit for human beings. Ten people are crammed into small cells and forced to sleep on the floor.”

Journalists suffer arbitrary searches of their homes and seizures of their equipment. Newsvendors also suffer violence. Government supporters have destroyed millions of dollars worth of newspapers. Moreover, “there is nothing more demoralising [for journalists] than to know they can be maimed or killed and their attackers will not be brought to judgment. Many fine journalists have been lost, particularly from stress. This has made recruitment of talented people difficult. But, despite the constraints, independent journalists have not let themselves be deterred from doing their work.”

Also at the conference dinner awards for lifetimes in journalism were made to veteran Grenada freelance Alister Hughes, to Derek Ingram, founder president of the CJA, and to the late Patrick Chokolingo, the pugnacious rule-breaker of Trinidad journalism who produced a new kind of weekly, The Bomb.

Stop jailing people for defamation

Wesley Gibbings, of the Association of Caribbean Media Workers, called for the offence of criminal defamation to be scrapped in the region. In Grenada, an editor faces prison for criminal defamation in a reader’s letter criticising the prime minister.

Wesley also pointed out that, in Cuba, journalists are serving long prison sentences for independent reporting. In Haiti, no one has been charged with the murder of Jean Dominique. In Guyana, the Stabroek News has been a lone voice against restrictive legislation linked to reckless reporting on TV. In the Cayman Islands, advertising has been withdrawn from Cayman Net News. In Jamaica, anti-terrorism legislation poses a danger to free expression.

Jocelyne Josiah of Unesco said the Caribbean media have a vital role in giving a voice to underrepresented and marginalised people. Unesco has an international programme for communications development which includes multimedium training courses in Dominica and the Bahamas. Sir Fred Gollop, chairman of the Caribbean News Association, said that poverty excluded millions from the information society.

John Victor, president of the Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago, a journalists’ organisation, said that Trinidad now had five TV services and 22 radio stations. More did not necessarily mean better quality. “Standards are dropping rapidly. Errors of fact and judgment are made by unskilled and untrained young people, who can nevertheless evolve into excellent journalists.” He asked the business community to help MATT in remedying the situation.

Vic Fernandez, president of the Caribbean Broadcasting Union, said the CBU was sending a team to Greece to provide 50 hours of coverage of Caribbean athletes at the summer Olympics.

Spin: the new Australian industry

Pieter Wessels from Australia attacked spin doctors. Australia and New Zealand have the freeest media in the world, he said. The main problem is people trying to manipulate them. Government and lobbying organisations employ people to influence the angle of news stories. It has become an industry of its own.

“In Australia, young journalists are intimidated and browbeaten by heads of department. One young journalist was given a motorcycle by a government organisation.”

The law is another problem. In Australia, the truth of what is written is no defence against a libel action. An investigative reporter said his job was no longer worth doing because of the time he had to spend in court. He is still having to appear in court over a story he wrote five years ago.

Australia has 2,000 people graduating in journalism each year. There are jobs for 200.

Chris Cobb of the Ottawa Citizen in Canada said his paper had paid $150,000 to defend a woman journalist whose home was raided by police. She was charged under a new anti-terrorism law after she reported the case of a Canadian citizen deported from the United States to Syria where he says he was tortured.

S.Belal Ahmed, an editor in London, said that judgments were getting confused. Was fear of global terrorism information or hysteria? He saw grounds for optimism in the BBC staff’s protest against overreaction to Lord Hutton’s criticism of the BBC.

Demba Jawo from The Gambia pointed out the isolation of West African countries. To find out about one of them, you have to visit it. The press in Nigeria and Ghana is relatively free and well resourced. In Sierra Leone and The Gambias, resources are scarce. The civil war in Sierra Leone destroyed the media’s infrastructure. The government in The Gambia is not interested in training journalists but in control.

The threats to good reporting

David de Caires, of the Stabroek News, Guyana, leading a discussion headed Reporting under Siege, said that journalists must ignore threats. “If you give in, you have lost your journalistic soul. Somehow, you have to continue to operate without sacrificing your integrity.” In Cali, Colombia, Carlos Mendoza was gunned down after writing an editorial saying that drug barons should be extradited to the United States. “How many heroes do we have?”

State media can be independent only if their independence is guaranteed by statute.

Michelle-Pierre Louis, executive director of an NGO supporting community radio in Haiti, quoted a comment that Haitian journalists can choose only between exile and death. Since December 2001, over 15 have gone into exile. Armed gangs continue to kill and loot. But a courageous press has a little more leeway these days.

Michelle Faul, chief of AP’s Caribbean services, also made the point that journalists can get shot. In Iraq, American fire has killed more journalists than Iraqis have. She spoke of ministers in some governments who lean on publishers and editors by phone and of governments which keep journalists in line with the threat of losing their work permits. And there was a danger from untrained colleagues publishing half-truths and lies. She commended her own training in the basics of journalism on The Herald in Zimbabwe. Journalists need to spend more time nurturing newcomers, she said.

Roy Morris, of the Daily Nation, Barbados, said a significant proportion of media staffs were weak in training and experience. People with no experience can be manipulated. Training and hiring policies have to be right: we must get right who we select, how we train them, how we look after their welfare. “There’s certainly a difference between what we have today and had 20 years ago. Young people are coming in who are not intending to stay a lifetime. Unless we take more interest in hiring and training and welfare, we are going to have problems. In Barbados we have no functioning journalists’ organisation.”

Roy Morris said that one media house refuses to employ university-trained journalists. David de Caires wanted practical journalists to be put in charge of university courses. Attracting people of high quality into journalism is a problem, he said, particularly when salaries do not cater for people of intelligence.

Raymond Ramcharitar of the Trinidad Express said that a social agenda is useless unless people know what society is. Education is different from training. “My experience is that no one wants anyone who is educated.” Journalists need a sense of belonging to society. Their development needs a strong humanities-education component. It is difficult to write a quality newspaper in a small market, since newspapers must print things which will sell. The problem is to decide how much compromise you are going to make

Milton Walker of CVMTV, Jamaica, said that an enthusiasm for human rights and for equality, fairness and justice in society cannot be taught. It must come from deep inside you. But, for some, journalism is just a salaried job.

News in brief

Sunity Maharaj is standing down as executive director of the CJA when her one-year contract to establish the Trinidad HQ ends on August 31. We wish her well in her new work as a media consultant. CJA president Hassan Shahriar thanked her for organising a launch and conference which have given the CJA a high profile in Trinidad. A new executive director will be appointed in due course.

Sunity is meanwhile promoting three training projects in Trinidad: an internship programme, a course in newsroom management and another in sports journalism. She is organising a sports editors’ conference in July.

Blessing Ruzengwe from Zimbabwe was elected chairman of the CJA’s UK branch, at a well attended meeting in London in May. Ashis Chakrabarti ashischakrabarti@yahoo.co.uk is now contact man for CJA India.

Following Pakistan’s readmission to the Commonwealth, Reporters sans Frontieres has asked Commonwealth Secretary-General to intervene with President Musharraf concerning four jailed journalists. RSF says that Sami Yousafzai of Newsweek has been secretly held since April 21. Munawar Mohsin of The Frontier Post was given a life sentence in July last year for publishing a letter insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Rasheed Azam was arrested in Baluchistan in August last year for distributing posters showing a soldier beating young demonstrators. Rehmat Shah Afridi, former editor of The Frontier Post, was sentenced to death in June 2001 on a drug-trafficking charge, after he exposed corruption in the US-financed Anti-Narcotics Force. RSF is also concerned for Khawar Mehdi Rizvi, freed on bail but charged with sedition. He worked with two French journalists who visited Baluchistan without permission.

Local radios in Malawi have been in more trouble. The Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority threatened in May to withdraw the licence of the Catholic-owned Radio Maria. A former official has threatened to sue the Malawi Institute of Journalism radio for defamation. Police arrested a Capital Radio reporter after he published a ballot-rigging report that turned out to be untrue.

Our thanks

The CJA would like to thank all who contributed to the Trinidad conference including

Unesco, which gave financial support,

The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, which provided conference facilities,

Dr Bhoe Tewarie, in whose garden the conference dinner was held,

The C.L.Communications Network which sponsored the Commonwealth Media Exhibition,

The Trinidad and Tobago Publishers and Broadcasters, who entertained conferencegoers at a Port of Spain nightspot,

The Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago, which entertained conferencegoers to supper at Sunity Maharaj’s house,

All the speakers and all who contributed to the conference debates,

All who contributed to and advertised in the new CJR magazine.