WILL THE PRESS BE NEXT?

While there will be few who will disagree with the need for a National Broadcasting Code, nonetheless the Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago (TATT), should have ensured that the draft of its Broadcasting Code was so structured and with inputs from the media as not to open itself to charges of censorship.

It should understand as well that whether or not substantial changes are made before the draft is approved the code will be challenged in court in much the same way that the United States’ equivalent, the Federal Communications Commission’s Fairness Doctrine, created in 1949, has been challenged over the years.

There is and will be a need for the challenges to be made despite assurances by the Telecommunications Authority that it does not seek to abrogate, abridge or infringe such freedoms as enshrined in the 1976 Republican Constitution of Trinidad and Tobago as "freedom of thought and expression" and "freedom of the Press".

What is not known, generally, is that the broadcast media in Trinidad and Tobago, radio and television, enjoy greater freedom than the broadcast media in the United States of America. It is this freedom which the Telecommunications Authority seeks to redefine.

When the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) introduced in 1949 what TATT seeks to do today 56 years later, it referred to it as the Fairness Doctrine. But Fairness Doctrine or not it found its way, repeatedly, over the years into US courts of law. Even the US Congress entered the fray and in 1959 made an amendment to the Communications Act of 1934 and directed the broadcast media that they "operate in the public interest and to afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views on issues of public importance."

It was a radical position that Congress would not have dared to adopt with the Press, and however the amendment was couched it constituted interference. The US Congress, read government, was able to do this, because the broadcast media in the US, not unlike that of the broadcast media in this country had always come under government regulation, for example with respect to broadcasting on specific channels. The allocating of frequencies and the issuing of licences for this purpose had been necessary to avoid different broadcasting stations creating confusion through using the same frequencies. In addition, the government agency, the FCC, had employed as a lever the argument that the resource which the broadcasting stations used was publicly owned. As a result of these factors, the FCC was able to impose its code or Fairness Doctrine on the broadcast media.

The FCC, with its power of assigning of frequencies and granting of licences, had taken steps from the outset to have broadcasting stations come under a form of control and therefore it was easier for the FCC to have the stations agree. The challenges in court would come from the degree of control which the FCC, the regulatory body, wished to impose from time to time. Additionally, new challenges would be made to old rulings as circumstances changed.

There is a fundamental difference, however, between the FCC and the Telecommunications Authority, both of them creatures of the state. While the electronic media in the US had known restrictions, beginning a mere seven years after the 1920 introduction of radio news broadcasts, TATT was seeking to achieve this almost 60 years after the country’s first radio station, Radio Trinidad, and 43 years after the first television station, ttt, had begun broadcasting. For the record, commercial television broadcasting in the US began in 1939, five years after the FCC took over from the Federal Radio Commission as the regulatory body.

Although licences have always had to be applied for by companies wishing to operate radio and television stations in Trinidad and Tobago, indeed all telecommunications services, hence the measure of control, nevertheless the redefining of "freedom of thought and expression" and "freedom of the Press" had never been an issue.

There was a director of telecommunications (in the Office of the Prime Minister) to which all applications for licences were addressed, before the relatively recent formation ofthe Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago.

I do not doubt, even for the briefest of moments, the good faith of the Telecommunications Authority. I believe that it has erred, however, in not marketing the concept of a National Broadcasting Code both to the Publishers’ and Broadcasters’ Association and the representative body for journalists, the Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago. It should have appreciated the differences in situations which allowed for the Federal Radio Commission and moreso its successor, the Federal Communications Commission, to each present a virtual fait accompli to a compliant broadcaster audience, whether or not the challenges would come later. Meanwhile, in post- September 11, 2001 United States the world has noticed increasing government challenges to the freedom of the Press, particularly with respect to issues arising out of the conflict in Iraq. Will a future Administration in Trinidad and Tobago, for example, not content with TATT’s attempt to redefine broadcaster freedom, but rather emboldened by it, seek to abrogate, abridge or infringe the country’s Press freedom?