The Jamaica Gleaner yesterday again blasted the Guyana government’s decision to withdraw its advertising from the Stabroek News and it called on Caricom leaders gathering for their intersessional meeting in St Vincent and the Grenadines to tell President Bharrat Jagdeo that such an attack on press freedom stains the entire region.
And in the face of a similar cut-off of ads recently by two state corporations the local weekly the Catholic Standard said government is about to spoil its thus far admirable record on press freedom.
The Gleaner, in its editorial published yesterday headlined ‘Governmental malice in Guyana’ said the withdrawal of advertisements by the Guyana Power and Light Inc and the Guyana Sugar Corporation was a deepening of the government’s efforts to choke into silence Guyana’s free and independent press.
The editorial called on Caricom heads, in view of their declared commitment to freedom of the press, to tell President Jagdeo that the region is moving past such aberrant behaviour, and that such “nasty attitudes by Guyana leaves a stain on all their houses”. The Caricom Heads of Government meet for their summit in St Vincent next week.
The editorial called the recent events sad, noting that they diminished the great promise held out by President Jagdeo when he first assumed the highest office in Guyana. The paper said Jagdeo, explicitly and otherwise, promised relief from race-based politics and held out the prospect of a democratic engagement – “in terms of respect of a people’s right for a government of their choice and the encouragement of a discourse, even when it is discomfited, that would be robust and frank.”
Instead, the Gleaner said, the President was becoming a worthy inheritor of the mantle of Forbes Burnham. “He may not have as yet assumed the worst of Mr Burnham’s excesses, but his assault on the free press is classically Burnhamite,” the newspaper said. “And in some respects, Mr Jagdeo’s cynicism is worse. Mr Burnham never really went out of his way to claim his democratic credentials or a badge as defender of the free press.”
The newspaper noted that Jagdeo had signed the Inter-American Press Association’s Declaration of Chapultepec, which pronounces support for a free press, and which has among its provisions a repudiation of the use of advertising to either punish or reward the press.
Stabroek News’s sin the Jamaica newspaper said is that “it does what good newspapers do – it has been frank and fearless in mirroring the Guyanese society, which means that it is sometimes fiercely critical of the country’s administration.”
The Gleaner repeated its previously stated position that “when governments spend money, whether on advertising or other services, it is the people’s resources that they utilise; not that of the ruling party or its ministers. Such resources have to be deployed in the interest of the people, not on partisan malice, as is now being done by the Guyana Government.”
“Hopefully, Mr. Jagdeo will quickly come to the appreciation of this and an understanding that his current behaviour weakens democracy in Guyana – and all that that portends. Maybe his Caribbean Community colleagues should reinforce those home truths when they meet for their summit in St. Vincent, next week.
“The leaders, who have all in the past declared their commitment to freedom of the press, must tell Mr. Jagdeo that the region is moving past such aberrant behaviour, and that such nasty attitudes by Guyana leaves a stain on all their houses.
“Indeed, they should listen keenly to the arguments of the representatives of Caribbean media, with whom they will engage in St. Vincent and bury those spectres that would haunt press freedom.”
Meanwhile, the Catholic Standard’s editorial, its second on the issue, called the withdrawal of advertisements a big mistake made as a result of very bad advice which could cost the government its reputation and the next elections.
It said a step backward has to be taken and everything reviewed. “Pragmatic economic reasons given for the withdrawal should be superseded in favour of being seen to be an impartial and free democracy,” the newspaper said.
Pointing to the economic reasons given for the withdrawal of advertisements the Catholic Standard said that while much has been made of circulation figures, readership has not been taken into consideration. “For instance, would any government or corporation abroad seriously prefer to advertise its jobs in a tabloid with a huge circulation which caters to a readership avid for Page Three Pin-up girls and severed heads on the front page, or in a serious paper with a smaller circulation catering to a readership interested in business analysis? The Financial Times vs the Sun?”
The weekly newspaper urged the government to return to the status quo ante for its own sake and for the sake of the nation which has seen progress and just desires to live in freedom and peace.
Stabroek News’s editors have maintained that the government is penalising the newspaper for its editorial stance.
