Suggestion was made to anchor about modifying statement on removal due to pregnancy

-NCN consultant

National Communication Network (NCN) news anchor Natasha Smith was not told to retract her statement attributing her removal from on air to her pregnancy, only to consider modifying it, according to communications consultant Abraham Poole.

Poole was hired by NCN to examine how it handled Smith’s case as well as disciplinary action taken against Sport Editor Jocelle Archibald-Hawke after the state-owned media company came in for severe flak over its treatment of both of them.

Poole told Stabroek News yesterday that he made the suggestion to Smith following a meeting she attended with 17 managers, all of whom denied that the decision to remove her as anchor was made because she is pregnant.

Natasha Smith
Natasha Smith

Responding to a statement by the Guyana Press Association (GPA), which said that Smith was asked to retract her claim that she was yanked off air because of her pregnancy and that she called out from a doctor-ordered bed rest to attend a meeting, Poole said that while she was asked to attend the meeting he had with management, it was not an order.

Smith, in a Facebook statement on Thursday, said she was hospitalised and hinted that she might have gone into labour prematurely, four weeks before her baby is due. She remains hospitalised and is being monitored because her blood pressure is high.

According to Poole, following the meeting with Smith and the managers, she said that while she heard the managers’ denial that the decision was taken because of her pregnancy, she believed otherwise. She also said she believed what she was told by one of the managers, who was there when the decision was taken, but when asked she refused to name the person in question. Poole said he felt Smith should have named the person, who would then have a chance to defend himself. He also questioned what kind of man he was if could not stand up and defend Smith.

Poole said yesterday that he was hired by the board of NCN as an independent practitioner and he wanted to set the record straight as it related to some of the statements made in the GPA press statement.

Describing parts of the statement as “ridiculous,” he maintained that Smith was invited to the meeting on his request, since he did not want to have the meeting in her absence. He said that on her arrival, she said she was on doctor-ordered bed rest, but wanted to be present. He said that there was no “cruelty” in having Smith at the meeting.

Fundamentally, he said, at the meeting all 17 of the managers said that they were never under the impression that the decision was taken because of Smith’s pregnancy.

Asked if he should not have spoken to the managers individually, Poole responded in the negative and said that at no point did he get the feeling that the managers were colluding. He said that Smith’s immediate supervisor Sharda Lall, who described Smith as her friend, also said that the decision was not taken because of her pregnancy and she had told her this. Smith admitted that she and Lall did have such a conversation.

Lall also apologised for informing Smith that the decision was taken with immediate effect as that was not the case.

According to Poole, the decision was taken to “improve” the news and this was confirmed by the set manager. He also pointed out that Smith had four more days before going off and questioned why management would not have waited until she left.

He said the entire situation has been “hurtful” to those working at the network and one manager described how he was in the supermarket shopping with his wife when a member of the public pointed him out as one of the persons in the decision making machinery targeting Smith and Archibald-Hawke. The latter was suspended without pay after she made derogatory remarks about a colleague on Facebook. NCN, after coming under fire, later amended the decision and agreed to pay Archibald-Hawke but her suspension remains.

“This matter is hurtful to the people of NCN,” Poole said, while adding that another manager, whose wife went through a difficult pregnancy recently, was asked by his wife how he could target Smith knowing what they endured.

He said he has found that due process was followed and the decision was taken in the interest of the news.

He called for the GPA to be balanced in its statements, while pointing out that NCN is the arm of the state and needed to model the virtues of the government and therefore it was in their best interest to clarify what transpired. “It is not about winning, it is about setting right, it is not about fighting the GPA,” he said.

NCN had issued a statement on Wednesday to inform that its board had hired the services of Poole, who found that actions taken by the network in relation to Smith and Archibald-Hawke did not amount to gender bias nor were those actions discriminatory.

Poole was said to have found that there was no gender bias and that Smith was not targeted because of her pregnancy. As it relates to Archibald-Hawke, he found that notwithstanding serious disturbing infractions, NCN opted for discipline to effect change and that it was compassionate in later deciding that she would be paid during her month-long suspension.

The GPA on Thursday roasted NCN over its handling of the cases and maintained that the network’s management is instituting willy-nilly sanctions that “are not grounded in any stated management directive or policy. We urge that this practice be discontinued forthwith.”

The GPA statement once again called for the intervention of the Chairman and Board of Directors of NCN and the Office of the Prime Minister to look into the operations of NCN.

It was also pointed out that the minutes of the August 8, 2016 management meeting showed that Smith was indeed removed by the CEO because of her “present condition” and that he had instructed a “tight shot” of her during broadcasts to “remedy the view. That decision was communicated to Ms Smith by other managers, who all understood the CEO’s direction to be that a pregnant Natasha Smith could not continue as news anchor.”