Gov’t switch to web ads premature -Corbin

The government’s move to place more state advertisements online while decreasing the amount placed in the print media is evidence of the administration’s “lopsided thinking,” PNCR Leader Robert Corbin says.

Robert Corbin

Asked about the decision yesterday at his party’s press conference, Corbin said that “the whole issue is premature.” “If President Jagdeo had fulfilled his commitment by distributing the 90,000 computers to the people along the coast, and… had completed the broadband network which he is boasting he will have between Corentyne and Essequibo …and [if] the internet were the major means of communication, then such a decision would make sense,” Corbin said. “But like many other decisions of the PPP, they always put the cart before the horse. And therefore the decision to reduce the ads in the print media when still the average person still depends on the newspaper seems, to me, lopsided thinking,” he said.

Meanwhile, party Chief Whip Lance Carberry suggested that the move was intended to starve independent newspapers of advertising. “Let’s call a spade a spade,” he said.  “The fact is that the PPP’s attitude to the media that they do not consider to be pliant to their cause has been to squeeze them economically.”

He noted too that the recently established procurement website, www.eprocure.gov.gy, did not contain all the information that the government said it would. According to him, the government had promised that it would display the allocation of projects on the website, but he said that this is not the case. “If the government is serious, these things have to be credible,” Carberry said, while opining that there is “no credibility” to what they say. Carberry also noted that the laws of Guyana require certain things to be published in the print media.

On Thursday, Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon said the government is moving away from the traditional and more expensive means of advertising in the print media and is taking advantage of the transformation in the Information and Communica-tions Technology sector. “Our intention is to migrate, as much as possible, definitely more and more… government ads and government notices into the electronic world,” he explained.  The government has also stated that concerns raised by media houses about the move were solely influenced by “blatant self-interest” and “commercial considerations.” It noted that there are few examples that can be cited from the rest of the world where government advertisements are placed in mainstream newspapers on a routine ongoing basis.

Since August 9, there has been no booking of ads by GINA in Stabroek News or other private newspapers though some have been placed in the Guyana Chronicle.

Stabroek News Editor-in-Chief Anand Persaud has, however, said that government has not provided a reasonable rationale for suddenly pulling ads from the print media. He said the government could have been placing ads for many years on the web and he questioned why this had not been done as an accompaniment to the print and broadcast ads. He suggested that the real reason for the move may have been hinted at in Dr Luncheon’s statement about the expense incurred in print advertising, as it seems that the government is conserving on expenditure in some areas in light of next year’s scheduled general elections.

Persaud added that the government also had to convince the public that the website and the poorly patronized Guyana Chronicle would provide sufficient publicity and notice of procurement advertisements and other government business. The government has for the third time in less than four years changed its policy on state advertisements in the print media and this, Persaud said, was a classic sign of policy jumble or worse, the rewarding or punishing of media entities. The latter, he noted, would constitute a clear violation of the press freedom Declaration of Chapultepec to which Guyana is a signatory.