In recent months several persons have attempted to arrest the runaway media poison by instituting court action. The intention is to provisionally gag the culprits from repeating propaganda that targets certain persons and, if the action succeeds, to slap punishment on the propagandists.

In any democracy the right to dissent is sacred. Citizens are guaranteed their right to criticize. This includes criticisms of persons who hold public office. There should at all times be robust criticisms, which should be respected. But the privilege ends where criticisms are defamatory. It also ends when the critic indulges in hate propaganda, very often to incite racial hostilities.

The amended Representation of the People Act provides a harsh penalty of one hundred thousand dollars and imprisonment of two years for anyone who causes, utters, publishes or causes to be published remarks that result in racial or ethnic violence through race hate or race incitement. The more recent Racial Hostilities Act also makes race crime punishable.

The question therefore is why none of these propagandists has been charged under either of these laws?

On certain TV channels there is every night a diet of hate being churned out. In this regard we recall during a parliamentary debate on the subject what the former Minister of Information Mr. Moses Nagamootoo said: “We must not forget, not for one moment, that the most insidious appeal to racism is the racism that enters into your sitting room, into your houses, the racism that pollutes the electro-magnetic waves, the air waves, the racism on the television screen.”

Hate propaganda is a crime. It is so stated in our reformed Constitution. Yet it seems so difficult for the state-appointed panel of broadcast experts to haul television operators before the courts for infraction of our laws.

Much of the lawlessness in the society is due to the proliferation of hate remarks. The cold-blooded murder of policemen, for example, is founded on remarks that policemen are involved in extra-judicial killings. That propaganda, repeated often enough, worked on killers like morphine on drugs addicts. They became `high’ on television hate propaganda.

Television operators should be told in no uncertain terms that they are not owners of the channel or frequency. They are licensees who broadcast with permission from the State. A condition to this permission is that the licensee cannot allow his station to be used to propagate hate. If the licensee is guilty of this offense, then the license should be revoked. It is in this regard that we justify the frustrations of citizens who question why no license has been suspended, much less revoked.

The constant complaints about talk-show hosts and their irresponsible remarks should not become a ritual that is encouraged by non-action.

The long-awaited Broadcasting Bill should be made into law, and a full-time Commission of competent, no-nonsense persons should be established.