History and state advertising

It is not often that former heads of state or government admit to having made mistakes during their period of office, and in this country it is very rare indeed. Forbes Burnham is said to have done it, but not in relation to his perversion of state structures and institutions for authoritarian purposes, but in connection with his decision to scrap the railway. Now we have former President Bharrat Jagdeo conceding in somewhat cautious language that “in retrospect it may be the wrong decision” to have withdrawn state advertising from Stabroek News in 2006.

The almost seventeen-month denial of state ads to this media house by Mr Jagdeo’s administration was not the first time that the PPP/C government had withheld advertisements from the newspaper. On the first occasion, however, it only affected those placed by the Bank of Guyana, which institution had received a verbal instruction from the Ministry of Finance to economise on costs. According to a report carried at the end of 1994, the Bank interpreted this to mean that it must only place ads in the state media, although it had no qualms about including the Mirror, the PPP-aligned paper, under that rubric.

When the Stabroek News issued a press release on the matter, however, it was not carried in the state media. It might be noted in passing that this was at a time when Mr Moses Nagamootoo was Minister of Information. When after a considerable lapse of time David de Caires, the late Editor-in-Chief of this newspaper, succeeded in meeting the Finance Minister, he told Mr Ally that it could not be argued that the readership of the Mirror was a more appropriate target audience for advertisements from the Bank of Guyana than was Stabroek News.

The ads were eventually restored, but some years later as mentioned above, the newspaper was subject to a much more comprehensive ban in relation to state advertising. As we have reported on more than one occasion, the then President and various spokesmen maintained that the decision was an economic one, not a political one, and that the Kaieteur News, which continued to receive advertisements, had a higher circulation than did the Stabroek News. In his press conference last week, Mr Jagdeo repeated the assertion that in 2006 his government had chosen to advertise only in the private newspaper which had the “highest circulation.”

It was a rationalisation of the indefensible, of

course, and thirteen years ago de Caires wasted no time in calling it “fictitious” and pointing out that no one knew the audited circulation figures for either the Kaieteur or the Chronicle, although it was widely believed that those of the latter were low. He was to propose among other things, that an independent advertising agency from the region be retained to carry out a survey of the impact of advertisements from the three papers, and to advise on which of them had the target audience for the type of ads government placed. None of this had any impact on the government.

Neither, it must be said, did a high-level media delegation comprising representatives from Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica, that included among their number Mr Rickey Singh, who had been forced to leave his job at the Graphic under the PNC and who had close links with the government. They met the President in St Vincent, and offered to assist with the setting up of a fair system for the distribution of government advertisements.

The President apparently remained unmoved, and in a subsequent press release the delegation said that the withdrawal of state advertisements “could objectively be viewed by independent observers as having the effect of subverting the commercial viability of the newspaper and by extension resulting in a press freedom problem.” They went on to conclude, “Freedom is indivisible, and a threat to any newspaper in the region is a threat to us all.” Various other local and international organisations such as the Guyana Press Association, the GTUC, the private sector, IAPA the IPI, CPU and the Inter-American Human Rights Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression also condemned the government’s action, all to no avail. It should be added that then former President, Mrs Janet Jagan in her columns in the Mirror opposed the disallowing of state ads in the Stabroek News.

Recently we published again what is thought to have been the background to the decision and the administration’s intransigence, which was seen as emanating from Mr Jagdeo himself given his tight control of government at the time. It was directed at forcing the newspaper out of business, and clearing the field for the Guyana Times, which was run by the President’s friend, Mr Ranjisinghi Ramroop. The discontinuation of state advertising had been preceded by rancorous attacks on the newspaper by the administration in relation to various matters, including columns it carried by leaders of the Alliance For Change.

Significantly, the advertisements were only restored in June 2008, a month or so before the launching of the Times, to which the government obviously wanted to give ads, but given its line of argument would have felt inhibited about so doing without first restoring them to Stabroek.

However, that was not the end of the story, since in September 2010 the government announced that state advertising would be placed only on the internet, as well as in the Chronicle and the Mirror, and no longer in any of the four private newspapers. Cost and the need to take advantage of digital technology were the reasons advanced on this occasion, although once again the illogicality of still placing them in the state paper and a party political organ was not explained.

In view of his history, reporters were justified in asking the Leader of the Opposition whether he was ‘ethically unfit’ to criticise the current government’s use of state media, a question which he did not answer directly. However, he went on to say,

“State ads must not be used in a punitive manner… I did not do it in a punitive sense but notwithstanding that, I think it was wrong.” Furthermore, he went on to advocate a course he had earlier rejected, namely, there had to be some way to ensure that all private media no matter what their stance could enjoy access to state assets. “It is not…me saying this because I have a history on this matter, but looking forward… I think we must have in the new Government, a system which guarantees state ads to private media entities,” he was quoted as saying.

After what happened in the past, is he sincere? The question has as its context the fact that this newspaper has been critical of the current government on constitutional grounds, something to which the opposition would not be averse. That aside, it is hardly worth remarking that good intentions are easy if a party is out of office, but once it is in power and is functioning in a climate of criticism, it may perceive the exigencies as requiring a contrary response.

In addition, governments in our part of the world are often more concerned about appearances than substance, as then President Jagdeo’s signing of the Declaration of Chapúltepec in 2002 would attest. One would only know if a PPP/C government – which would not be led by Mr Jagdeo in any case – would learn from earlier events and adhere to the suggested new guidelines, if it actually won a majority in the next election.

In the meantime, it is to the Opposition Leader’s advantage that he has admitted he was wrong, even if he has not conceded his ulterior motive for his decision at the time. All that can be said is that it is unlikely we will hear that from his lips in the foreseeable future, or probably any time in the future, for that matter.

And now we have another government, which has had a good record with the media and freedom of expression issues up to this point, and which has now opted to go down the same path as its predecessor. Its arguments in its own defence have been demonstrated in our reports on the subject to be utterly ‘fictitious’, to use de Caires’s word applied to a similar situation from another era, and it appears oblivious to the damage it is doing to itself. All of this does not sound quite like President David Granger, who after all in a different incarnation had a no mean background in journalism and always evinced a good grasp of freedom of expression issues.

But then Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo had an even longer association with the practice of journalism, although in his case he was either a minister or the senior member of a party until 2011 whose record in office in terms of freedom of expression was not unblemished. He currently has responsibility for the state paper and DPI, so has he imported some of the attitudes of those days into his present duties?

Many moons ago he helped fight for freedom of expression under the Burnham regime. One can only ask if the Prime Minister is the same man who in 1980 wrote ‘Case History for the Mirror’, which appeared in the PPP’s publication, ‘The State of the Free Press in Guyana.’

Perhaps he should refresh his memory of what a free press means by rereading Article 7 of the Declaration of Chapúltepec, which was adopted at an Inter-American Press Association conference in 1994, and to which, as mentioned above, Guyana is a signatory. It states that the granting or withdrawal of government advertising cannot be used either to reward or punish the media.