The Caribbean Media Corporation suspended its operations about three weeks ago, laying off nearly all of its staff. Its folding (to use that expressive word) ended at least for the time being the outputs respectively of the Caribbean News Agency (CANA) and the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU).

There was less lamentation in the region than one might have expected. CANA apparently is no longer regarded as an important source for regional news and ideas. In one quarter it was maintained that CANA was essential to the Caricom Single Market and Economy (CSME), itself so far something of a non-starter. It is not clear why this should be so. As far as is known CANA has never provided commercial intelligence. However on a deeper level it is, of course, true that the exchange of news and information and the consequent widening of understanding among the decision-makers and peoples of Caricom provides the essential support which enables not only the CSME but all the institutions of Caricom to function.

To understand the potential value of the media for integration one must back up to a wider vantage point, to the so-called Wise Men's report in January l98l. The 'Wise Men' were a group of Caribbean experts who were entrusted with the task of charting a course for the Caribbean Community in the nineteen eighties (l980s). It was perhaps the most distinguished of the groups which have from time to time assessed the Caricom. Chaired by William Demas, the group included Ramphal, Mc Intyre, Arthur Lewis, Arthur Brown and Carrington among others. Dealing with the origins of Caricom, the Wise Men declared that the roots of the Caribbean Community are not buried in doctrines of integration economics. Caricom is not just the product of regional economic planning. Responsive as it is to the economic and political realities of the post-war world, Caribbean regionalism is the outgrowth of more than 300 years of West Indian Kinship - the vagaries of the socio-economic political history of a transplanted people from which is evolving a Caribbean identity. Without that element of West Indian identity a Community of the Caribbean would be mere markings on parchment - a Community without a soul, without vision of a shared destiny, without the will to persist and survive.

The Wise Men had perceived that it was such shared identity which alone made Caricom and other regional institutions viable.

Despite the even earlier recognition of such emerging identity by far sighted observers such as the priest Pere Labat in the early l8th century, there was always a sense of separateness dictated by the dividing sea. The common identity was for the most part the perception of Caribbean intellectuals, born of their experience of togetherness and exchanges in particular places at particular times, importantly in London where Forbes Burnham, Maurice Bishop and Eugenie Charles were studying law at the same time.

The perception had also derived from the leadership within the region of powerful NGOs whose perception of the common region wide problems facing them led to the foundation of the Caribbean Congress of Labour (CCL) and the Caribbean Union of Teachers (CUT) and other regional bodies.

On this matter the Wise Men pointed out that both the preamble to, as well as many of the functional cooperation aspects of the Treaty of Chaguaramas recognised that integration is in many respects a matter of bringing the Caribbean peoples closer together. Further in support of this insight the Wise Men quoted the memorandum submitted to them by the Caribbean Congress of Labour which stated that the integration movement is about "integration of people rather than only of production processes, trade etc."

Is not the West Indies cricket team the highest expression of such common identity with Headley and Constantine achieving international recognition as West Indians long before the coming of the political leaders? And is it not, as some have maintained, that it is precisely the decline among the team members of this sense of West Indian identity which has affected the morale of the team?

Clearly the mass media can play a positive role in fostering such awareness of a common identity and hence common destiny within the Caribbean. In the case of CANA in keeping with this insight the Wise Men recommended that it should pay more attention "to expert background analyses on topics of regional interest not limited to integration issues". CANA did indeed with international funding at one stage commission and distribute special regional features but these came to an end with the funding.

However, the sense of a shared identity in good repair is not only a matter of news and analysis. In this matter as in so much else in the early days of integration, Guyana had taken the lead.

At the first Summit Conference in the region held in Port-of-Spain in l963 the Guyana delegation had presented a paper on the exchange of news and information material. In those days before television, the thrust of the Guyana proposal was that if radio broadcasting was to be Caribbeanised no one territory or station had the resources and talent to produce enough creative material to fill its output. The exchange of scripts and programmes could therefore make for higher regional content. One could also exchange l6mm film (again this was before video) and photos and exhibitions so that the people of the Member States, despite the separating sea, could see that they shared a way of life and confronted similar problems.

When Guyana renewed its proposals at the Fourth Summit in Barbados in l967 decisions taken at that conference had as one outcome the establishment of CANA.

In the meantime, Guyana had taken the lead in exchanging radio plays with the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation which likewise utilised two series of radio talks on The Law and Medicine in Everyday Life written respectively by Mr Sonny Ramphal and Dr Frank Williams.

The potential of exchange of media material remains largely unexplored. Even in the press there is one glaring gap. Caribbean readers are treated day after day to the same photos out of the newspaper "libraries", the same photos of Panday or Manning, or Jagdeo, or Lester Bird or PJ Patterson. Seldom are there new photos of Caribbean scenes and people. The people of Caricom reading their own papers are not allowed to see that the people of the other member states look rather like themselves.

This is not just a matter of good feelings. Each Caricom decision-maker is faced from time to time with taking decisions which will not be easily acceptable to his own voters. However, he can more easily make such hard decisions if his own people understand that a difficult decision will be of benefit to the people of the region who share a similar history. It is the lack of such understandings which has dedevilled Caricom decision making and slowed the pace of integration in such instances as the CSME and the Caribbean Court.

The Caribbean Identity rightly identified as the "glue" holding the integration movement together is a historic growth, but it is now being rapidly eroded by several influences including the tug of new patterns of external linkages including trade and by the twenty-four hour bombardment by the rebroadcasts of foreign TV.

What of the future of CANA and the associated agencies? As discussed above the origin of CANA lay in the recognition that regional integration required the support of region wide dissemination of information. Only deepening regional awareness would enable the regional institutions to operate effectively. But it was also the case that CANA in taking over the Reuters regional office, at that time provided a necessary news service for the regional press.

But much has changed over three decades or more. Technologically there is now the internet and e-mail and in the visual field video provides an altogether greater flexibility than l6 mm film. It may no longer be economically feasible or necessary to maintain a group of regional correspondents such as the BBC does for its 3 times daily Caribbean Report. The CBU's Carib-Scope has produced valuable cultural features but would not these be better distributed (and utilised) by quick-pack or similar arrangement to individual stations rather than televised centrally from Barbados.

Over the three decades and more national media including the press have changed and matured. In the regional movement itself it is not an illusion to detect a certain drifting away of the major states from each other.

In short fundamental changes require fundamental reconsideration of what mechanisms, if any, are required to serve the regional media not only in discharging their responsibilities within democratic societies but in providing support, through fostering regional consciousness, for the integration movement which remains the best hope for Caricom. The real issue, perhaps, is whether CANA and the CBU, merged as the Caribbean Media Corporation, can be reconstructed to provide a bettter and more relevant service and in a manner that will make them less dependent on external funding.