Mr Holness loves the press. Doesn’t he?

WHEN A politician throws his hat into the ring and auditions for public office, he opens himself up to the glare of public scrutiny, which becomes more intense if he wins, especially if he forms the Government. It is not unusual for leaders, as they struggle to retain office, to perceive this examination as intrusive and unfair. It breeds a sense of siege.

That is the context in which this newspaper prefers to view Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ recent criticism of the Jamaican press, his conflation of general reportage and opinion journalism, his attempt to weaken trust in the media and his urging of political supporters to obtain their news from the Government’s, and his party’s, social-media outlets.

In that regard, we do not believe that Mr Holness gives any great credence to his seeming allusion of an oppositionist, or biased, press and expect that, on quiet reflection, he will return to the truth he declared 15 months ago when he addressed the 49th annual conference of the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU).

In those remarks, the prime minister made the case for a strong and independent press in a liberal democracy in the age of social media, “with its fake news and alternative facts”.

Added the Jamaican leader: “The best protection from the dangers of social media is to have a free press that is strong in ferreting out the truth. I depend on our press to ensure that, whatever false information is spread by social media, they, at some point in time, will use their editorial abilities to correct the false narrative that is spread by social media.”

Mr Holness’ observation came three days before more than 200 newspapers across the United States were driven to coordinate their editorials to warn Americans against the dangers that Donald Trump’s, the American president, incessant unsubstantiated attacks on their credibility posed to the safety of mainstream journalists and, ultimately, to the institutions of democracy, of which they are among the watchdogs. Mr Trump’s weapon of choice to spread “alternative facts”, a concept coined by one of his key aides, is the social-media platform, Twitter.

Mr Holness is not, we presume, of the mould of Donald Trump, whose leadership is without intellectual moorings and is sustained by feral instincts and authoritarian tendencies that find institutional restraints bothersome. In essence, there are legitimate questions about Mr Trump’s commitment to democracy.

BE WARY, PM

But while Mr Holness has every right to criticise the press, and to direct his supporters to platforms that offer them what he frames as unfiltered version of his own, and the Government’s, truths, we recommend to him – and the public – his own observations of August 2018.

His larger point then was that social-media platforms, and the citizen journalists with which they may be populated, were without the invigilation that constrains traditional/professional media, where misinformation is more likely to be filtered and context embraced.

It is in this environment that errors, when they occur, are more likely to be acknowledged and corrected and, therefore, that “alternative facts”, about which Mr Holness was concerned, are unlikely to gain currency. It is the press’ maintenance of these standards that allows it to preserve the unwritten compact with the society, in which it is afforded access in exchange for its role of watchdog and to be voluble against threats to rights, freedoms and democracy, if, and when, they arise.

Indeed, it is not without reason that, as Transparency International’s 2019 Corruption Barometer revealed, Jamaican journalists are seen as being considerably less corrupt, or, put another way, enjoy a greater level of trust than any other group in the society. The 44 per cent of Jamaicans who believe most politicians to be corrupt is much higher than those who hold the same perception of journalists.

Mr Holness and his Government haven’t, up to now, come close to a threshold of being threatening to a free press. The prime minister, nonetheless, should be wary of being induced to creeping movements that might, even unwittingly, lead to hostile action.

The opinions on this page, except for The Editorial, do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Gleaner.