Opposition and Independents join criticism of the media

Prime Minister Patrick Manning got a lot of company in his criticisms of the media from persons on the Opposition and Independent benches in the Senate yesterday. As the Upper House debated Prof Ramesh Deosaran’s motion calling for full broadcast of the proceedings of Parliament, Independent Senator Kenneth Ramchand and UNC Senator Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan joined the bandwagon in excoriating the media for misrepresenting, quoting statements out of  context and publishing only sensationalist accounts of the proceedings in Parliament. Ramchand stated that while the media were always complaining about censorship, it had “by accident” turned out to be the biggest censors. As he argued for an “oral equivalent to Hansard,” Prof Ramchand recalled that he had attempted in vain to persuade “editor after editor” to  devote two pages to the reporting of Parliament. Noting that reporters left the Parliament after 4.30, he lamented:  “Ask any reporter, ‘what yuh doing’ and they would say ‘Ah looking for a story.”

In this process, Ramchand stated, “fundamental issues” such as Government’s move to take control of the Green Fund, the relationship between the Cabinet and the Parliament and the Cabinet’s flagrant breach of the Standing Orders and the Constitution as illustrated by the decision to move Parliament, were being ignored by the media, he stated. “The population sees Parliament through snippets, extracts, summaries and angles, done by other people (reporters),” he said, adding that the way debates were reported constituted a “misrepresentation.” He suggested that Government subsidise the media so that it could give the appropriate priority to coverage of Parliament and other important matters.

Seepersad-Bachan also condemned the media for not covering “technical issues” such as energy matters and for focusing on the sensational. It was left up to Eastlyn McKenzie to point out that Parliamentarians could not dictate to a privately owned media what it should or  should not write, or show. “We need to have our own television and radio,” she said. “Unless we are going to employ the journalists privately to do our bidding,”  journalists employed with the privately owned media had to do their jobs according to the guidelines set out by the media house.