Guyana suffers decline in media freedom

…ranking drops 3 places

reporters Without Borders (RWB), an entity that campaigns for media freedom and the rights of journalists, has indicated in its 2017 World Press Freedom Index that there have been significant setbacks in Guyana over the past year, although the constitution guarantees free speech and the right to information.

The RWB Guyana World Press Freedom Index published on Wednesday has placed Guyana 60th in its world ranking, down by three places from its last ranking; while Trinidad and Tobago has been ranked 34th, Jamaica 4th, and the Eastern Caribbean 38th.

RWB has said that, in Guyana, “officials often use… defamation laws, which provide for fines and up to two years in jail, to silence opposition journalists”; and that “members of the media regulatory authority are appointed directly by the president. This restricts the freedom of certain media outlets, which are denied licences. Journalists are also subjected to harassment that take the form of prosecutions, suspensions and intimidation”.

President of the Guyana Press Association (GPA), Neil Marks, told Guyana Times on Thursday that the organisation has placed on record the deterioration of the state media climate in Guyana. He said: “Ministers of the Government continue to dictate content to the state media, with some stories even being vetted by a senior Government minister.”

He also said that the GPA recently had cause to note what he described as the “frightening development” of Communities Minister Ronald Bulkan reportedly seeking to dictate the agenda of the state media by suggesting what should be the main news item in the Guyana Chronicle.

Marks declared, “The President’s counter that Bulkan was expressing his personal view does not hold, as Bulkan signed his missive to the newspaper as ‘Minister of Communities’. Even if he had not signed as minister, anyone — and surely the minister must know — with common sense would deduce that Bulkan’s public office trumps any other positions he may hold; and as such, his missive to the Chronicle was an attempt at censorship and intimidation.”

The GPA, Marks said, remains deeply concerned that despite the public utterances of President David Granger: that his Administration will not seek to control the public or private press, the Director of Public Information, Imran Khan, continues to serve as Chairman of the Board of the Guyana Chronicle. “This has to change if the public utterances of the President are to be taken seriously,” Marks has asserted.

Reporters Without Borders has said that the 2017 index “reflects a world in which attacks on the media have become commonplace, and strongmen are on the rise. We have reached the age of post-truth propaganda and suppression of freedoms, especially in democracies.”

Declaring that the overall level of constraints on media freedom worldwide has risen by some 14 per cent over the past five years, the organisation has said that media freedom has never previously been so threatened.

In the past year alone, the organisation wrote, some 62 percent of the 180 countries surveyed have seen “a deterioration of their situation, while the number of countries where the media freedom situation was ‘good’ or ‘fairly good’ fell by 2.3 per cent.”

The World Press Freedom Index has been published annually since 2002. The survey is based on criteria that include pluralism, media independence, media environment and self-censorship, legislative environment, transparency, infrastructures and abuses.