Editorial | The ombudsman and the press

Recently, the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ) advised Jamaican media companies that they won’t any longer have to pay for real-time access of voting results from its information management system during elections.

Or, as the ECJ put it, it has “taken the decision to waive the charges”. Which, we suppose, implies that they could be reimposed at any time. They shouldn’t.

For, as Glasspole Brown, the director of elections, said in his communication to media managers, “this increased accessibility is expected to enable more media houses to accurately and effectively disseminate election results”.

There should not have been a charge in the first place. The timely dissemination of election results is part of the mandate of the ECJ, a public body paid for by taxpayers, who themselves have a primary interest in election outcomes.

Moreover, the ECJ’s mandate is not only the technical conduct of elections, which it has done effectively for four decades. It has an obligation to ensure that the process is free, fair and, importantly, transparent.

Transparency builds confidence in the system and enhances the integrity of election outcomes, which helps to strengthen democracy.

And the free press, in its role as societal watchdog, is a vital partner in this exercise. So removing the burden of a financial cost on its real time access to, and transmission of, voting information is not a concession to media, but to democracy.

Given its now wider responsibilities in the management of the political polity, the ECJ, with respect to the press, must now do something more.

The ECJ may not yet be accustomed to, or fully grasped, its expanded obligation as arbiter of the ethical conduct of political parties and their supporters, as opposed to its responsibilities for the mechanics of elections.

SUBSUME INTO THE ECJ

However, in February of this year, on the eve of the municipal elections, Parliament approved legislation to subsume the office of the political ombudsman into the ECJ and to make all the members of the commission (the four independent members; two appointees each from the two main political parties; and the director of elections) “indivisibly” the Political Ombudsman.

The ombudsman job is to police a Political Code of Conduct agreed to by the parties, as well as to investigate, and pronounce upon behaviour by political parties, their representatives or supporters that might ignite tensions, or worse, between political rivals, or society in general.

Last month, a video surfaced on social media targeting six senior reporters of this newspaper, who were accused of bias against the administration of Prime Minister Andrew Holness and the governing Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). They supposedly skewed their reporting to promote the collapse of Mr Holness’ government.

The vulgarity of that assertion would, in the normal course of things, make it easily dismissible. Except that the targeting of specific journalists by person(s) so far unknown, especially given the inflammatory tone of the accusations, was tantamount to placing bullseyes on their backs and inviting hotheads to do their worst.

Shortly thereafter, a second video, following the same theme, and targeting the same journalists, emerged. But this time the defamation was widened to include the broadcast entities of the RJRGLEANER Group, of which this newspaper is a member. Greater slander was promised.

Happily, Information Minister Dana Morris Dixon, on behalf of the government, declared the administration’s support for a free and independent press and the right of reporters to do their jobs without intimidation. Horace Chang, the general secretary of the governing Jamaica Labour Party, did so on behalf of the JLP, and dissociated the party from the targeting of the Gleaner Six.

Prime Minister Holness, without specific reference to the incident, has also declared his support for independent media.

NOT BEYOND REPROACH

To be clear, The Gleaner does not believe that itself, or any media, to be beyond reproach or criticism. Even good newspapers occasionally get things wrong, notwithstanding internal checks and balances.

But their systems are designed to acknowledge errors and make corrections. And in The Gleaner’s case, people who are dissatisfied with internal resolutions can appeal to an independent ombudsman.

However, there is a difference between legitimate, and even forceful, disagreement and the deliberate targeting of reporters, as in the case of the Gleaner Six, that invidiously places people’s lives in danger.

Which is why we previously proposed, and now repeat the call, that the leadership of the two big political parties, the JLP and the opposition People’s National Party (PNP), jointly and separately, make formal declarations in support of independent media and commit themselves and their representatives from gratuitous assaults against reporters which they should know could endanger the lives of the targeted journalists.

But beyond what the parties do, the ECJ, in its role of Political Ombudsman, should immediate lead all registered political parties in a revision of the existing Political Code of Conduct to specifically acknowledge the place of media in sustaining democracy as well as commit their representatives to refrain from speech and or behaviour that directly threaten, or might inspire threats against, journalists.

We might be told that the code’s exhortation of party officials against making statements that are “inflammatory or like to incite violence to others” is a sufficient catch all.

No! The free press in a democratic society occupies a singular space, the endangerment of which is detrimental to fundamental rights and freedoms.