If it is true that Mr. Nigel Williams, the editor in chief of the Guyana Chronicle, was ‘taken aback’ by the level of public concern that met his decision to discontinue the weekly columns of Dr. David Hinds and Mr. Lincoln Lewis, he clearly is unable to adequately judge the socio/political setting of his employment, and this cannot be good for a journalist, much less an editor in chief. Given the history of the paper he manages, and living in the political cauldron that is Guyana, how could he possibly not have known that his dismissal of these columnists/activists would give rise to much questioning?
Almost everywhere that there is a state media, politicians have attempted to influence it, so why we expected that APNU+AFC would be any different is anyone’s guess. It ceaselessly criticised its predecessor for similar infractions and we were clearly naïve in our belief that it would keep its manifesto promises to guarantee the independence of the media, remove barriers to access to the state media and appointments to it, etc. But as with other promises, since its accession to office the government has repeatedly had to be chided by both national and international agencies to the point where ‘The GPA (Guyana Press Association) called on the Government of Guyana to desist from carrying out certain actions that are inimical to press freedom and instead to subscribe to its promise of breaking with the past’ (SN: 3/5/17).
