In an editorial yesterday the Trinidad Guardian said that President Bharrat Jagdeo should take a step back from his stance on the withdrawal of ministry ads from Stabroek News to avoid a return to the dark old days.
The Guardian also argued that as the region moves closer to becoming a single domestic space, developments in one part have implications for the entire region.
Joining a number of other regional newspapers which have condemned the Guyana Government's move, the editorial also expressed the view that the removal of state advertising could adversely impact the company's financial stability in the context of the Guyana economy, and that could be seen by staffers, including journalists, as a threat to their jobs.
The independent Trinidad and Tobago daily, first published in September 1917, said "as the region moves increasingly to becoming one domestic space, a single market, and trusting the governments to hold to their word to forge the single economy by next year, developments in one constituent part of the whole have to become the business of all."
The newspaper which is the longest surviving daily in Trinidad and Tobago cited as a case in point what it referred to as "the flagrant use by the Government of Guyana of state advertising dollars as a censure against the independently-owned and minded Stabroek News."
According to the Trinidad Guardian, the Stabroek News "has passed the test of editorial and reporting independence against both the governments of the People's National Congress and the now ruling People's Progressive Party."
The editorial observed that during their times in office, the Stabroek News had been attacked and vilified by both governments, and that the Trinidad Guardian said was "a sure measure of the paper's refusal to toe the line for either side of the political spectrum in as sharply polarised a country as Guyana."
For its pains this time around, the PPP/Civic administration of President Bharrat Jagdeo has been withholding his Government's business from Stabroek News, the editorial said. And in an economy such as Guyana, it continued, the "removal of state advertising is impacting severely on the financial stability of the newspaper."
The editorial then asserted that "clearly the objective is, in the first instance, to punish the management of the paper, and, secondly, it is hoped to engender a docile attitude amongst the owners, managers and journalistic staff of the newspaper as they begin to see the threat to their jobs."
Fortunately for the people of Guyana, the Trinidad Guardian continued, publisher David de Caires "is not a man who easily gives way in such circumstances. It's fortunate too that Mr de Caires is a regionalist who understands the importance of linkages across the region to fight off government intrusion in the process of free information and opinion for the survival of the Caribbean."
The editorial said it's a trait he demonstrated in T&T in that era when Basdeo Panday's United National Congress was seeking to have the free media kneel before him following a controversial newspaper headline. "Mr de Caires then joined his colleagues in this country to confront the Prime Minister and his government," the editorial added.
"Therefore his strife becomes ours not merely for the camaraderie he demonstrated in the moment of need here, but also as a means of ensuring that the practice of starving the media into submission or death does not become common practice in the Caribbean," the Trinidad Guardian declared.
It stated further that as a media house whose history goes back many decades, it will never be in "favour of anything which smacks of intervention in the right of the media to report professionally and in an unbiased fashion."
Moreover, the editorial argued, "it is clear that state funds, which ultimately belong to the people, should not be used to imprison the very owners of the resources in an age of darkness without information and opinion."
The Trinidad Guardian said further that "in addition to individual media houses around the Caribbean raising the issue to the embarrassment of the Guyanese Government, it is more than commendable that the Association of Caribbean Media took it upon itself to be at the recently-concluded Heads of Government meeting in St Vincent and the Grenadines to raise the issue with the Guyanese President."
However, the editorial noted, "President Jagdeo continues to insist that removal of the advertising is an economic decision," with the government seeking to get the widest exposure for its dollars, and that "is not surprising (as) he would hardly admit to repression of the media."
The Trinidad Guardian also cautioned that "President Jagdeo should for a moment contemplate the history of Guyana under Burnham and Hoyte and how the country suffered economically and otherwise in those times when the interest of the ruling party was paramount."
"That contemplation," the editorial concluded, "should make the young PPP leader take one step back to avoid Guyana returning to the dark old days."