Media monitoring panel will start operating on February l
Two highly experienced Caribbean media specialists begin work in Guyana on 1st February as the Independent Media Monitoring and Refereeing Panel. They will assess and issue periodic public statements on the standards of media reporting and coverage during the elections campaign period leading to General Elections on 19th March 2001. In a press release issued yesterday by Mr Hugh Cholmondeley, Convenor of the Media Code of Conduct Roundtables , it was announced that the Panel is comprised of Dwight Whylie from Jamaica, an electronic media specialist who was a former General Manager of the Jamaica Corporation and a senior executive with both the BBC in the UK and the CBC in Canada, the Chairman of the Panel, and Harry Mayers (Barbados), a print journalism specialist who was the first General Manager of the Caribbean News Agency and former Caribbean representative of the Reuters News Agency. The Guyana Bar Association has agreed to provide whatever legal advice the Panel may require. The Independent Media Monitoring and Refereeing Panel will accept complaints, commendations and other views from the public including political parties about media performance in the reporting and coverage of events during the campaign period. The Panel was established as a result of several roundtable discussions during October and November 2000 that involved over 50 owners, practitioners, TV talk show hosts and other media operatives who are signatories to the Code of Conduct and Guidelines. The Code of Conduct and the Guidelines were published in the Stabroek News and require the media to be fair and objective in their coverage of events, to refrain from publishing or broadcasting anything that may incite racial hatred, to hold themselves free from control by any political party and to check the accuracy of facts carefully before publication. The Panel will also monitor and analyse the content of newspapers, radio and television stations in order to determine non-adherence to the Code and non-compliance with its Guidelines. Media owners have agreed to give prominence in publishing and broadcasting the Panel's findings and conclusions in any investigation of a complaint. The Panel will work closely with monitoring mechanisms established by the UN, UNDP, the EAB and other organisations. The Panel will function between 1st February and 26th March 2001 under a project supported by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM). Observers have noted that to date despite the fact that many media houses and journalists have signed the code there has been no effort whatever by some television stations to apply professional standards of journalism to programmes that are regularly broadcast and that the most provocative and unchecked reports are regularly aired on such stations.
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