Today we join?thousands of newspapers across the globe in commemorating World Press Freedom Day – the anniversary of the 1991 Declaration Of Windhoek, a statement of principles promoting a free, independent and pluralistic media worldwide.
The declaration naturally affirms that a free Press, a fundamental human and social right, is essential to the sustainability of democracy.
Still, the right to speak and write freely remains a luxury in several societies, as does the facility to hold a regime accountable for crimes committed against its people. Exposing the policies of suppression and impoverishment of some governments is a virtually unattainable goal. Sadly, there are quite a few examples to draw on of members of the Press firmly gagged, ruled by fearful silence, deprived of their right to express their concerns and offer their views, or tell of their dreams.
Thankfully, our situation is nowhere near as bad as in places such as Haiti and Colombia where, regrettably, colleague journalists have recently been killed for speaking out against wrongdoers.
Yet like them, we still yearn for the day when we could boast of a Freedom Of Information Act as promised by successive administrations.
We long also for regular and unfettered communication with officials of our Government, whose process of issuing radio licences is yet not as transparent as practitioners would like it to be.
We are equally concerned that there is no liberalization of our television spectrum. In the absence of such, the state-run CBCTV persists with its nightly parade of ministers of Government, despite promises by both the current administration and past to ensure balanced programming and equal air time, as well as more transparency and greater integrity.
As to the members of the Opposition, often in their anxiety to have bad things said about the Government and only good things reported about themselves, they have been found just as guilty as the ruling party of engaging in varying degrees of intimidation. These range from muscular legal letters, in support of unsubstantiated claims, to verbal attacks and personal threats against journalists.
In modern-day Barbados, the old adage “he who pays the piper calls the tune” is robustly alive and well.
And so as we commemorate World Press Freedom Day, we strongly reaffirm our commitment to the truth, to balance, and to fairness in the hope of attaining genuine free expression of thought associated with a mature democracy.
The singular mission of our hallowed profession of journalism is to seek to stem the tide of truth twisting, fakery and barbarity, else others would have succeeded in having an entire nation cower before unobjective propaganda and political brainwashing.
