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May 05, 2014 News
– Granger
“The time has long passed for government to relax its control, we should have more radio stations and the government should desist from controlling information released in the state media.”
Those were the words of Opposition coalition A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) retired Brig. David Granger who in a telephone interview with Kaieteur News expressed agreement with the sentiments made by US Ambassador to Guyana Brent Hardt on media censorship in Guyana.
According to Granger “during the campaign of 2011 when Bharrat Jagdeo was President he had made certain allegations which were against me personally and they were published in the state media particularly GINA [Government Information Agency].”
He further recalled that in 2012, when the 12th Parliament convened, “I had cause to write to the Speaker particularly after the 2012 budget on the quality and character of the Parliamentary debates and the Speaker actually wrote to the head of GINA and [National Communications Network] NCN complaining about it because we had threatened to actually exclude them unless they were more balanced.”
“In fact the next year, we had cause to complain because the articles they published were absolutely biased, not only in favour of one side, but they were derogatory, calling the Opposition power drunk and all sorts of expressions which were unbecoming of the state media” said Granger.
He outlined that up to now nothing has changed in that regard “and as a result of that we actually wrote to President Donald Ramotar and we have taken positions in the last three budgets 2012, 2013 and 2014 to …disapprove expenditures of those two agencies because of bias.”
“I agree with the comments of the US Ambassador that there is no place in the modern media for this lopsided reporting and for the attacks which have been leveled against the Opposition by the government through the state owned papers” the Opposition Leader added.
According to Granger, NCN and Chronicle are supported by public funds and therefore they have responsibility towards the public.
He said that APNU outlined “that the public must know what is happening in the National Assembly don’t publish what the Opposition is saying.. publish what the National Assembly is deliberating on which means that if the leader of the Opposition says A and the government side says B both sides must be carried that is fairness.”
Even Handed Advertising
The Opposition Leader spoke also to the evident bias where the distribution of government advertisement is concerned.
He outlined that the State must be more even handed with all of the newspapers because the evidence suggests that persons buy in greater numbers the Kaieteur News and Stabroek News so any logical government would be more inclined to advertise with the papers that have more readership.
“So if the State was really interested in getting information to the public it would be economic to include it in the private independent media which is more balanced because people are not fools they can go on all sorts of electronic media and get information, the Executive is following an old cold war of trying to deny balanced news from getting out to the public” said Granger.
Granger spoke of the far off communities where there is no newspaper, telephone or proper radio signal when he posited that “government expects that its total control of the media would ensure that those distant communities only get one side of the story but that is no way to bring about development.”
The Opposition Leader expressed that the government control of the state media “even though there is no evidence of actual interference apart from withholding of advertising, I do believe that the control of state media should be relaxed and operated on professional grounds.”
The other thing Granger said is the fact that the President himself who is the Minister of Information “led to the suspension of the license of CNS channel 6 under the Jagdeo regime, I don’t think Mr. Ramotar has done anything so drastic but I think that the fact that the President is actually the Minister of Information literally sucks the oxygen out of the democratic credentials of the state media because the editors presumably would not want to publish information that is prejudicial to the President’s interest.”
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