Partly perhaps, not purely.

* Each ministry, each corporation, has its own target audience in general and for specific projects and will be guided in its advertising policy by an assessment of its own particular needs and objectives. An across-the-board decision made for all of them is not an appropriate business decision for any of them.

* Evidence is lacking that the decision was based on hard data in regard to audited circulation figures or professional analysis of advertisement impact on various types of readership. No manager worth his or her salt would make a sweeping decision of this kind without such data.

* Even if hard data is available, and one must hope it is, it would not prove the case for a total withdrawal of advertisements from one newspaper. A reduction, maybe, but total withdrawal cannot be a rational commercial decision.

* The two corporations in particular have boards of directors accustomed to base decisions on hard data meticulously presented and carefully considered. This simultaneous decision does not have board fingerprints on it.

* Account has not been taken of the fact that advertisements target very different readerships. Stabroek News's readership is not the same as that of the very popular Kaieteur News. Stabroek News would expect to receive a significant level of advertisements based on who is likely to be reading it here and abroad - just as the Independent, the Guardian and the Financial Times in the UK attract a good amount of advertisements in the same market as mass-circulation newspapers.

* If value for taxpayer's money is the overwhelming consideration, it is hard to understand why Stabroek News is singled out for withdrawal and the Chronicle and the Mirror are unaffected. "Traditional" advertising in the state and party papers would need to come under similar rigorous scrutiny.

These arguments are sufficient to make it understandable why a number of Guyanese, regional and international agencies, commentators and individuals doubt the reason given for the removal of advertisements from Stabroek News and suspect a political, and therefore more worrying, directive. Their concern has caused enough bad publicity to affect Guyana's image. A low-level business decision having such an effect would normally lead to a higher-level political review. That no such review has yet taken place is bound to increase suspicion that the original decision was not in fact a low-level business one. This government has a good record of maintaining a free, even a very free, press and media. The decision to withdraw advertisements from Stabroek News is not an "attack on press freedom" in the generally applied sense of censorship of content, strong-arm threats to the safety of editors and journalists, crude intimidation of one kind or another, denial of the means to publish, actual closure of presses. But the decision creates unease that there may be more, and perhaps worse, to come.

What has happened raises the question of perception. In a democracy the use of state purse or power against critics, however unfair such critics may be conceived to be, must absolutely be avoided. When it is not what may just be an ill-tempered swipe at a perceived adversary can easily be seen as an assault on treasured principle.

Gordon Hewart's famous warning in a 1923 English court that in case after case it is a proven fact that "justice should not only be done but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done" applies not only to justice but to freedom too. Freedom of the press must not only be preserved but manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be preserved.