The Office of the President says the cut-off of ads to Stabroek News is not a press freedom issue but simply a shift of patronage to another private newspaper because of its higher circulation and the limited financial resources available to the state.
In a letter dated February 8, 2007 to the Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM), the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), and the International Press Institute (IPI), Permanent Secretary in the Office of the President Dr Nanda K Gopaul said it was unfortunate that these organizations would rush to judgment on an unsubstantiated claim by the Stabroek News without first seeking a response from the government.
The letter was released yesterday by the Office of the President after Stabroek News asked for it.
Gopaul said he had been directed by President Jagdeo to respond to correspondence to him from the organizations in relation to "advertisements by the Guyana (sic) Information News (sic) Agency (GINA) in the Stabroek News".
Gopaul said that IAPA's approach was not a reasonable one, unfair, flew in the face of all the cardinal ethics that constitute good journalism and it does not match the behaviour that an independent organisation should have.
Expressing the hope that the organisations would have a more balanced view on the withdrawal of the ads, Gopaul said that the government was unable to verify what the Stabroek News reported to them but deduced that "news reports and utterances here in Guyana seem to make the issue of the reduction of the advertisement(s) by GINA to Stabroek News as one of freedom of the press and suppression of an independent paper."
The regional and international organisations representing journalists, publishers, broadcasters and media workers in general have called on the government to reverse its decision to withdraw ministry ads from the Stabroek News after the newspaper sought explanations since last year and got no response from the authorities. Stabroek News Editor-in-Chief David de Caires deemed the withdrawal of the ads as being politically motivated because of the newspaper's stand on issues of governance.
The Stabroek News through its daily protest banner below its masthead has declared government's withdrawal a misuse of taxpayers' funds to suppress this newspaper.
Gopaul, however, said that "because of limited financial resources, the government traditionally advertised in two dailies, the state paper and one private daily. It offers a limited number of advertisements in a weekly paper (The Mirror, which is closely aligned to the PPP/C)." Gopaul said the "Stabroek News was then considered the largest private daily and as a consequence received the bulk, if not all of the advertisements from the government. The privately-owned Kaieteur News over the last several years received a very small fraction of the advertisements from government."
He said that recently "it was determined independently by GINA that Kaieteur News had overtaken Stabroek News by far to become the largest privately-owned paper." He said that as a consequence of the assessment GINA decided that a majority of the government ads should be placed with the Kaieteur News, since it represented greater value for money.
He said, too, that the Kaieteur News "is often even more critical of the government than the Stabroek News."
De Caires has rejected GINA's explanation as "contrived and fictitious," noting that the matter had nothing to do with economics and circulation since the government's action was a direct political intervention which followed recent numerous attacks on Stabroek News by President Jagdeo. Furthermore, Stabroek News has argued, the Office of the President and GINA have provided no substantiation whatsoever in relation to their claim about circulation figures.
Gopaul said that in addition to the state-owned radio, television station and newspaper, there were a number of other privately-owned television stations, dailies, a weekly and a monthly journal, which operate without government intervention. "Therefore you could understand our surprise that your organization would see the issue of one private newspaper losing advertisements to another private newspaper because of falling circulation as a freedom of the press issue."
The government has not withdrawn advertisements from the private media, he explained, adding that it has shifted more advertisements to the largest private newspaper in the country because of the result of Stabroek News' significant drop in circulation. He said that "we" are amazed that anyone including IAPA would see this as an issue of suppression of press freedom. "It seems as though in the rush to judgment your organisation is defending a particular newspaper and not the principle," he said.
He contended that the Stabroek News campaign seems to be to recruit international support to retain a monopoly on state advertisements "through a deliberate misrepresentation of this issue to the detriment of the other private newspaper."
He added that he was accused by the Stabroek News in his capacity as Permanent Secretary of the Office of the President as the person who gave the instruction to withdraw advertisements from the newspaper and despite explanations to the contrary, the newspaper continued its defamation and as such he would file a lawsuit against it.
ACM General Secretary, Wesley Gibbings confirmed that the ACM had received Gopaul's response and was perusing it.
The ACM, IAPA and IPI are among the many local, regional and international organisations and media houses which have condemned the withdrawal of the ads and have called for a reversal of the decision based on government's declared commitment to honour the Declaration of Chapultepec, a famous declaration of free press principles adopted by IAPA in Mexico City in March, 1994, which states in Clause 7 that "the granting or withdrawal of Government advertising may not be used to reward or punish the media or individual journalists."
Among the more recent to condemn government's withdrawal of ads from Stabroek News were the Media Association of Jamaica Ltd, the Jamaica Gleaner, the Trinidad Express and the Barbados Nation. The Guyana Press Association, the Guyana Human Rights Association, the Guyana Trades Union Congress, the opposition PNCR-1G, the Working People's Alliance and the AFC were among others locally to oppose the move.