Ex-independent senator: Advertising suspension affects press freedom

Independent senator Sunity Maharaj speaks to Education Minister Dr Michael Dowlath at the launch of journalist Richard Charan's launch of his non-fiction book A Village of One: Essays on Trinbago’s Past, Places, People, at the Central Bank Museum on August 26. - Paula Lindo

Former independent senator and journalist Sunity Maharaj said suspension of advertising is a press-freedom issue. She said in the changing media landscape, it is vital that traditional media is given the resources to remain viable.

In May, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said a reduction in media advertising was among her government's cost-cutting measures.

Speaking at the launch of journalist Richard Charan’s book A Village of One: Essays on Trinbago’s Past, Places, People at the Central Bank Museum, on August 26, Maharaj said the viability of the media was essential.

“I think the Central Bank is very much aware, when in the very distant past, when a newspaper went to court, and it was ruled at the Privy Council that the limiting of foreign exchange for one particular newspaper was in fact an attack on press freedom.”

She said the media had to transform or die, as it was under all kinds of pressures from technological changes, different audiences and different types of storytelling.

“How do you survive? I want to be absolutely clear in saying: for those who bash the media, imagine a world without the media and that you are at the mercy of social media as your place to find out what is really happening. Just try to think, where would you find anything you could trust?

“This is not to say the media doesn’t have its problems, but the responsibility is not necessarily the responsibility of the industry. The media can make money if it wants as an industry, but it is an institution of a functioning democracy, to pursue the right to know and to know truth, and all of us have an investment in that.”

Maharaj said Charan, along with writers like Seepersad Naipaul and Derek Walcott, had their writing forged in the newspapers. She said many writers of that time had had the support of the BBC.

“The writers we have now, there is not necessarily a BBC to bring them to the world. This is where many of the Caribbean writers found validation, found exposure and found the financial support to keep them going. Very often it was the gig at the BBC that allowed them to pay for clothes and food and so on while they were writing.

"In an independent age, this is the responsibility of us to nurture the talents of people like Richard and many other writers.”

She called on the government to implement an independent arts council which could provide support for writers and artists, regardless of what government was in power.

“It cannot be something that changes from administration to administration, as to which policy is followed.”

Maharaj also called on the media to create a space to allow writers to develop their talents.

“You shouldn’t have to take an office job to get the money to pursue your passion.

"Journalists in TT who have literary talent often have to subsume that talent under the requirement of deadlines to deliver work, and if you have the energy, to try to pursue your gift in private.

"Richard was very smart, his journalism, it starts with curiosity, and one might say a feature is valid, you can go and write a feature, but he cottoned on to journalism as the avenue through which to access a newspaper audience on a daily basis. This is an extremely novel form of investigative journalism. The question is, how does a writer like Richard exist and survive within the construct of journalism in TT?

“What Richard has is the gift of telling a story, he brought storytelling, he brought history and he brought investigative journalism together to produce this book. I don’t know if he ever thought he would have a book out of those articles. I suspect it was an organic work of journalism, one story that led to another and another, and the reception the public had for it, the fact that people came alive reading that, and found that rare type of reporting in a newspaper is something that kept him going and his own ability. He just found himself.”

Maharaj said she was grateful to Express Editor-in-Chief Omatie Lyder for giving Charan the space to write his columns and to the team that encouraged and supported him in writing the book.