Dear Editor,
I have taken the time to peruse your editions from Friday, April 19, to Monday, April 22, 2013, in effort to read what I believe would have been expected coverage of two press releases sent by the Government Information Agency (GINA). During this period GINA disseminated releases on April 18 and 19 that captured the Agency’s position on the cut to its budget by the parliamentary opposition and a call to the Association of Caribbean Media Workers (CMW) to condemn the said budget cut respectively.
I wish to reiterate GINA’s position as articulated in the April 18 release that the cut to is budgetary allocation is a “…wanton attack on freedom of expression and press freedom (sic) and a blatant attempt to deny the populace (sic) of their right to be informed.” It is in this context of an attack on press freedom that I feel compelled to note my concerns herein.
Your editions mentioned above were not only completely devoid of any mention of the two GINA releases noted, but contained a plethora of stories regarding radio licences and the manner in which they were issued. The latter was definitively described as an attack on press freedom. While it is your prerogative to decide the content of your newspaper, it would not have been illusionary to expect coverage of GINA’s position on the cut to its budget in the same context of an attack on press freedom. In addition, your paper provided coverage to the positions of the CMW regarding the said issuance of radio licences and how, in its opinion, it is viewed as an attack on press freedom here. Allow me to reiterate that the content of your newspaper is at your discretion and a right to so do. However, it is extremely strange that in the context of publishing the sentiments expressed by CWM, an international media organisation, you would deny GINA’s position from being articulated.
You have always defended your newspaper whenever the accusation of bias would have surfaced. In light of what I have noted herein, it would be gravely challenging not to conclude that bias may have been an integral factor in your decision not to provide coverage to the releases in question. To conclude otherwise would mean that you may not have received the releases, the same which were sent to other media houses and carried by some. GINA’s record shows that they were sent to your entity, but if it is that you are not in receipt of them, it can readily be made available.
Yours faithfully,
Neaz Subhan
Director
Government Information Agency
Editor’s note
The Government Information Agency (GINA) is the conduit through which government information is supposed to be channelled to the public; it is not an agency which normally should be editorialising on events or expressing political opinions in its own right. In other words GINA is not in the same position as NCN and it is the job of the government, not GINA, to defend the agency if it sees that as necessary. As it is, it has in fact done so, and we have reported on that defence. In addition to the full coverage given by SN on the parliamentary debates relating to the budget cuts, we also reported on two press conferences held by the PPP/C where Attorney General Anil Nandlall criticised the voting down of allocations to NCN and GINA.
With regard to that held on April 19, we reported the AG as saying (among other things) that the opposition was effectively refusing the Guyanese public the right to remain informed about what their government was doing for them. In the case of the second, held on April 22 our report in part read as follows: “Nandlall… said that the services GINA provides for the government are not luxuries but entitlements of the people of the country to receive government’s information.
“‘Because they are entitled… to know what it is their government is doing with their taxpayers’ money and whether the government is fulfilling the promises made in its manifesto.’
“He said government is entitled to publish its views just as the private media houses are entitled to publish theirs.”
As far as the actual content of the press releases issued by GINA and referred to in Mr Subhan’s letter is concerned, it really borders on the absurd, while Mr Subhan’s attempt above to equate the budget cuts for the agency to the improper issuance of radio licences is equally indefensible. Government is not lacking avenues through which to express its views, and in the case of NCN and the state newspaper – the latter of which while not receiving a state subvention directly nevertheless is the beneficiary of all government advertisements and therefore taxpayers’ money indirectly – exclude opposition and independent viewpoints from their airwaves and pages. That is the real freedom of expression issue here.
