Communications Consultant Kit Nascimento yesterday chided government for admitting that it violated the laws governing broadcasting by unilaterally granting spectrum to China Central Television by a mere phone call to the National Frequ-ency Management Unit (NFMU).
The China TV broadcast was formally launched on February 9, 2013 in the compound of state TV NCN where special provision has been made for it.
“My understanding of what Dr Luncheon is saying is that the government has executive authority to ignore laws since you cannot escape from the fact that Parliament passed the Broadcast Act to which the President himself has assented,” said Nascimento.
He was referring to comments on the issue made by Head of the Presidential Secretariat (HPS) Dr Roger Luncheon at this week’s post-Cabinet press conference. “The government applying to itself for a frequency?” Luncheon asked rhetorically. “…But obviously if they’re instructed what do you think they would do? If you were the managing director of NFMU and the HPS called you and said we’ve just agreed with the People’s Republic of China to broadcast the signals and…, they have selected a channel to do so, could you please go ahead and assign a channel, you think he’s [the Head of NFMU] going to tell me [Luncheon] that you got to apply and all of those things? I doubt it.“
Nascimento, a veteran broadcast practitioner, had expressed shock at the granting by the Guyana Government of a licence and broadcast frequency to the Government of China, saying it has given a foreign power the right to transmit here without being subject to regulatory requirements and the principles that should underpin licensing.
He pointed out in a letter to the press that the electromagnetic spectrum is a finite natural resource for mass communication and must therefore be employed in a responsible manner to serve the “public interest, convenience and necessity”.
It was the latest criticism of the government’s decision to award the frequency which had also been questioned by another veteran broadcaster, Enrico Woolford. Critics have said that the award discriminates against local broadcasters—who have had applications in for some time—and was not done transparently.
Nascimento said Luncheon had not explained how the channel would be regulated and questioned if this move was also part of government flexing its executive muscles. “…Has the government exercised its executive authority to also exempt them from regulation?…Has that not again set a dangerous precedent?” he queried
Referring to principles and practices set out by the US Federal Communications Commission, Nascimento noted that a fundamental precept in the conferring of a broadcast licence is for the licensee to “make a positive, diligent and continuing effort to determine the taste, needs and desires of the public in his (her) community and to provide programming to meet those needs and interests”. He asked how this would be achieved by a station transmitting what amounted to Chinese propaganda.
He also asked how the government would justify the precedent it has created by granting a broadcast licence to a foreign government. He questioned “Why should another government, with whom we have diplomatic, trade and commercial relations, not expect the same privileged right and request an exclusive frequency to broadcast on a domestic channel?”
Nascimento made clear that his comments in no way had anything to do with China. “It has to do with that fundamental regulatory principle of broadcasting that has been violated and my position would be the same if it were any other government… It’s not China or the USA, it’s the principle,” he said.
