WHEN THE LOVE IS GONE

Why my friends seem to think that some of the Prime Minister's shots at the media were aimed directly at me, I do not know. Yet, this week, they all felt they had to inform me, via e-mail, that I was lucky to be out of the country last Monday when Patrick Manning launched his so-called assault on the media. Some of them even added sarcastically that they were surprised the PM hadn't called my name. Me? What could I have written to anger the PM I wondered. Could this column's title be the issue? However, since I did not know what Manning had said, I crafted a generic reply, which I copied to all my keen informants: “Show me a politician who loves the media and I'll show you where he or she sits in the Lower House.”

Two days later when I eventually read the reports on the PM’s speech, I felt I should pen another response to my electronic penpals, one which now stated that I didn't at all think the PM had me in mind when he used his address at the opening session of a three-day conference hosted by the Commonwealth Journalists Association (CJA), at UWI Monday last, to criticise the TT media. But why bother? The first answer I sent them was still the most appropriate. Politicians and journalists played a constant game of lovers' musical chairs. When politicians were seated on the left hand of the Speaker, that is on the Opposition benches, they adored the media. They called the press day and night as if they were suffering from puppy love; they beamed when they met reporters in public.

It was “Hail fellow, well met” everyday. When they were lost in the political wilderness, politicos fought heroically for the media's everlasting right to publish what it wanted. However, as soon as elections were over and victory was theirs, the love affair came to an abrupt end. Now seated on the right hand of the Speaker, they didn't return phone calls, they ran with the speed of world class sprinters when they spotted a camera and microphone. They also suddenly realised the need for quality control and they slapped the press with as many libel suits as they could. Think about it. When did Patrick Manning realise that the TT media needed a school of journalism and media training and/or the development and incorporation of an appropriate and workable code of ethics? Last week, last year? Why not during 18-18? Or why not when former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday was blasting the press to kingdom come?

We all know why. Back then Manning needed the media because he had no real power. What is more, even though he talked now of the many lives that had been put at “considerable disadvantage, almost destroyed through careless, reckless and irresponsible work of many journalists,” back in the lean, mean days of Opposition, Manning was quite keen to see several UNC political lives wrecked by revelations of monies gone astray. He never worried then about people’s lack of redress, which in itself was ironic given the number of baseless accusations MP’s hurled at citizens from the comfort of their Lower House chairs. These accused had no right of redress, yet to my knowledge, Manning had not deemed this powerlessness undemocratic enough to warrant a means of balancing the rights of the citizen with that of the MP or for that matter, the introduction of a stricter code of parliamentary conduct. I could not recall either Manning ever openly criticising the Media Complaints Council, never finding wanting its deliberations.

Who did the PM think he was fooling? What did Patrick Manning know about quality media? He didn't even know about “quality” Government. Had his PNM administration, to quote the Prime Minister, “got its act together”? If you took a non-partisan look at this Government's record, the answer would be “no.” They were bunglers. They were the ones who needed a school, while the country needed a Politicians Complaints Council. The case of the Union Hall squatters was a perfect example of PNM lack of quality. The Prime Minister had a Minister of Housing who was breaking down squatters' shacks, north, south and central, while he, Manning, was simultaneously launching investigations into the demolition of squatters' homes in Union Hall, San Fernando. The questions we could ask about this PNM Government's “quality” squatting policy were non-ending. I certainly needed Manning to tell me if the head did not know what the arms were doing in his PNM administrative body, to explain whether all squatters were equal in PNM land or if those in Union Land were more equal than others. I wanted the Prime Minister to say if he was just trying to put the last nail in his nemesis' political coffin, to close the casket he started crafting when he named Dr Keith Rowley, Minister of Housing.

In short, I wanted Manning to show me where and when, with regard to squatters, his Cabinet had displayed a high standard of governance. Finally, I also wanted Manning to tell me if he thought media practitioners were stupid, that we didn't know the difference between “quality” and “censorship.”  Despite his lofty pronouncements on press standards, one thing was clear from Manning's pronouncements on Monday: the PM didn't like what he was seeing, hearing and reading in the TT media and he wanted it muzzled. If not, then why could he not resist the temptation to note during his address that “governments even in the most democratic countries were forced to introduce measures to bring about some measures of control”? His was the age old warning from those who sat to the Speaker's right: “Clean up your media house or we will clean it for you.” That's what he meant when he told the media to “get its act together.” In other words, the love affair was over.