If the Stabroek News genuinely feels that the withdrawal of ads from government ministries constitutes a restriction of press freedom, it should move to the courts to challenge this withdrawal.
For by now the Stabroek News must have recognised that the many statements it has managed to elicit in support of its case, has neither convinced or is likely to force the government to reverse its decision to place ministry ads in the State-owned Chronicle and in the highly popular, Kaieteur News.
I really cannot see how this issue constitutes a threat to press freedom. I have argued this point before in my columns. Even from the perspective of the Chapultepec Declaration, the withdrawal of ads by itself does not constitute a restriction of press freedom unless such a withdrawal can be shown to be part of a deliberate move to punish a media entity.
The Stabroek News has not proven that the government is out to punish that newspaper by withdrawing the ads of government ministries, but even if it were able to do so, it would still have a great deal of difficulty in convincing any court that the withdrawal of ads constituted a breach of the constitutional right of freedom of expression.
I have never come across a single decision whereby any court ruled that the withdrawal of ads - State, private or government - constituted a violation of press freedom.
I rather suspect that the Stabroek News and the media fraternity throughout the region know that when it comes to legal action, there is no chance that the government's actions would be invalidated by any courts on the grounds that it violates freedom of expression.
It is amazing that the Stabroek News and its supporters continue to pen opinions about how the ads issue is an abuse of press freedom, yet it has not explored the one option that can definitively resolve this dispute: it has not asked the local courts to pronounce on this matter.
In the seventies, the government of the day refused an import license to the New Guyana Company, the publishers of the Mirror newspaper. The Mirror challenged that edict on the basis that it contravened the fundamental right of freedom of expression since without newsprint, the newspaper could not be published and therefore this affected the free propagation of ideas, information, news and facts.
In the High Court, a judge ruled in favour of the New Guyana Company holding that the denial of newsprint infringed the constitutional right of free expression. However, a higher court that applied the “direct impact” test overturned this ruling.
That higher court found that the government had a right to deny the import license as part of its trade (restriction) policies and that this denial while affecting access to newsprint did not directly impugn the right to publish.
The Stabroek News continues to receive government ads from some agencies such as the National Insurance Scheme and the Bank of Guyana. As such, there is no total withdrawal of government ads but that newspaper is no longer receiving, we are told, ads from GINA which handles government advertisement.
The government's right to determine where it should place its ads should be respected in as much as one accepts that in exercising this duty the government cannot act arbitrarily. However, the government's position, whether or not it is believable, has not been contradicted. That position is that its policy has been to place advertisements in two dailies, the State-owned Guyana Chronicle and one private newspaper which for years used to be the Stabroek News. The government also advertised in the weekly newspaper, the Mirror, which is connected to the ruling party.
For the first ten years of the Kaieteur News's existence, it did not receive State advertisements. Moreover, the Stabroek News never bothered to argue then that the government had an obligation to ensure that all significant daily newspapers received advertisements.
The Peeper's position is that the placing of State advertisements must be based on marketing considerations. I have said this all along. However, so long as the government outlines the basis for its advertising policy, any complaints over this policy must proceed from an examination of how much deviation there has been from this policy.
The government never said that its overall advertising policy was based on circulation; this applies only to the choice of the private newspaper in which the government would advertise. The government can with justification argue a right to support the State-owned Guyana Chronicle regardless of its circulation since how can any government refuse to support the paper of the government.
When the Stabroek News first started, it saw itself as being the bastion of the free press in Guyana . However, it should recall that in those days the Hoyte administration continued to place government advertisements in the Guyana Chronicle. It took some time before the Stabroek News got any ads from the government who obviously preferred the State-owned newspaper.
If the non-receipt of advertisements is a freedom of expression issue, why then did the Stabroek News not complain that the policy of the Hoyte administration in favouring the Guyana Chronicle was a violation of press freedom?
Unless the Stabroek News can prove that the withdrawal of ministry advertisements was intended to punish their newspaper, it cannot even find refuge under the Chapultepec Declaration.
And even if it can prove beyond doubt that it is being deliberately punished, it will never be able to convince any court that this punishment directly impacts on its right to freely express its views.