G2K, Murdoch and media

Martin Henry, Contributor

Martin Henry takes strong exception to the targeting of partisan commentators.

G2K and its president have no right whatsoever to determine who may speak or write. What would have been far more useful is to demonstrate that media are deliberately and unethically excluding voices friendly to G2K interests.

Media wagons have gone into the customary defensive circle over remarks made by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP)-affiliated G2K about media bias against their party and the Government it forms. However, in its last Wednesday's editorial, 'The shrivelling of G2K', this newspaper espouses the view that this latest dangerous attack upon press freedom is only by mosquitoes.

Or as cartoonist Las May drew on the op-ed page, it is a Lilliputian G2K that is stoning a big, powerful - and dangerous - media beast with big teeth and spiked collar.

Apparently, the freedom of expression enshrined in the old Chapter III of the Constitution and the new Charter of Rights is peculiarly a media right not to be equally extended to others, particularly politicians who should take their media licks lying down in stoic silence.

The latest stand-off has come at the fortuitous time when the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA) and the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) were jointly holding a series of events in Kingston, including a training workshop for journalists, last week under the theme 'Media in Democracy'. And in the North Atlantic, bastions of media freedom, the Rupert Murdoch media empire, were under intense pressure in both the United Kingdom and the United States over alleged illegal activities in gathering, or, more to the point, manufacturing news.

People knew the powerful Murdoch media empire was hugely influential across continents, but the News of the World scandal has brought far greater exposé on the association with, and manipulation of, public authorities, including the police and prime ministers, and on the unethical conduct of Murdoch media.

Murdoch media, it turns out, have been playing the role of government-maker in the United Kingdom. When Murdoch media backed the British Labour Party, Labour won elections, and, according to a former media adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair, Murdoch was like an additional member of the Cabinet. Blair, it is now revealed, was calling Murdoch several times a week in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

When Murdoch media switched back to backing the Conservative Party, the party won the last election. And back in 1992, The Sun ran a (in?)famous headline after that year's election, 'It's the Sun wot won it!' The Sun-backed Conservatives led had unexpectedly defeated Labour. Prime Minister David Cameron is now in deep and muddy water over his and his government's relationship with Rupert Murdoch.

Declaring political stance

In many other societies, media organisations publicly declare their political stance and openly support particular political parties. Hence The Sun's April 1992 headline, 'It's the Sun wot won it!' And individual media operatives on the commentary side may do so. Incidentally, empirical data are showing that, politically, media, like academia, in terms of personal positions of members, are consistently more to the left than the general population in market-oriented democratic societies.

What Delano Seiveright, himself doubling as a talk-show host and adviser to the Government, and the G2K, which he leads, are complaining about is what they believe to be the domination of the media by commentators who are undeclared supporters of and mouthpieces for the Opposition People's National Party (PNP) and who are committed to thrashing the JLP Government.

Seiveright and the G2K have the right to raise their concerns, however much others may dislike and disagree with them - and however silly elements of the complaint might be. That is what the constitutionally protected freedom of expression means and what it should allow.

But personally, I take great offence at the following paragraph which appears in Seiveright's published response to the Gleaner story giving the feedback of political analysts to G2K's press conference which sought to out undercover PNP commentators. In his letter, 'Insisting on fair journalism', carried by The Gleaner opposite its scathing editorial last Wednesday, the political activist and talk-show host pompously declared: "G2K has for long been concerned with the increasing numbers of self-proclaimed and manufactured 'political analysts', 'financial analysts', 'talk-show hosts' and 'columnists' who speak and write under the cover of being objective."

As far as I am concerned, and for all the time I have been writing this newspaper column since 1987, every citizen is a political analyst with a natural right, indeed a duty, of engaging political discourse. Which, by the way, is what 'citizen' originally meant and is a much better title for members of the democratic polity than 'voter'. Some citizens, including political party activists, have the enormous privilege of having a media platform regularly available to them for undertaking their responsibility as political analyst. G2K and its president have no right whatsoever to determine who may speak or write. What would have been far more useful is to demonstrate that media are deliberately and unethically excluding voices friendly to G2K interests.
anyone who is a card-carrying member of a political party, as he is, or in other clearly demonstrable ways, has thrown in his or her lot with exclusively supporting a particular party, should so declare when he/she undertakes public political analysis. Such a person should be outed by anybody or any organisation who has the evidence and believes that the undercover status of such a committed political activist/analyst is hurting the outer's interests.

Setting parameters

In any case, in Jamaica where the majority political stance is one of deep disenchantment with politics and political parties, unrelentingly pushing an uncritical party position is a downhill road to loss of credibility and audience. And the G2K song and dance may not be worth it. Voting for a party, or sharing a party's vision or ideology, does not qualify for any formal declaration. After a while, the whole thing gets rather silly. Are commentators to declare, as a matter of duty, their leanings in values and beliefs on every issue they tackle?

Seiveright wants the Press Association of Jamaica and the Media Association Jamaica to consult with relevant stakeholders [who?] and set parameters [what?] that will guide news commentary [how?]. Broad and fair guidelines, actually, have been set, certainly in the case of this newspaper when I started out as columnist 24 years ago: Do not breach the principles of good taste in the society in which you write and the newspaper publishes. Do not involve the paper and yourself in libel. Avoid errors of language and errors of fact. Write what you want which our readers will want to read.

Seiveright is out on a limb to be demanding "declaration of political leaning" as a necessary guideline. And a bit of balancing history for him: In the 1970s when the democratic socialist government formed by the PNP under Michael Manley took a powerful and concerted battering from media, The Gleaner actively sought to recruit columnists to counter its stable of anti-government writers but found no willing takers. Wilmot Perkins, one of that powerful band, is still around and working. Can you imagine describing Motty as a sympathiser of the JLP!

The minister of information, Daryl Vaz, in light of the Murdoch/News of the World scandal, is on to something far more substantial than Seiveright's parameters for news commentary. Using the occasion of addressing the CBA/CBU Kingston event last week, the minister called for an end to the "shilly-shallying" and the speedy implementation of the long-promised media complaints commission, and he repeated the call to journalists at last week's post-Cabinet press briefing.

In a world with Murdoch media and in which politicians and media are vying for bottom place in public trust, a letter writer, Arnold Benedict, published in the Observer last Wednesday, 'Hold the media accountable', went even further. "Media in Jamaica and elsewhere have always made much of other institutions policing themselves, from the police to Parliament; the media have been at the forefront of the calls for external and impartial oversight, in the interest of accountability and transparency and democracy. It is full time the media begin to practise what they preach. A body must be set up to hold media accountable, and this body, in the interest of transparency and accountability, should not comprise media practitioners. Civil society must step in and play this vital role, safeguarding society from a biased and corrupt media and saving media from itself."

Issue with polls

G2K has taken issue with not one, but three media-sponsored polls showing the JLP and the Government it forms in a less-favourable light than the Opposition PNP. It would be enormously useful to have some poll data for Jamaica, and certainly for the UK now rocked by the News of the World scandal, on public opinion on media regulation.

Minister Vaz's speech to the CBA/CBU event last week is important enough to be carried in full in print media. I got the text, like a number of other media practitioners and all media houses through the back channel 'OPM News'. In that address in which the minister of information bemoaned the absence of a media complaints commission and pointed out that Jamaica's independently ranked press freedom is 23rd out of 191 countries, placing us ahead of Britain and Canada and only one point below the US, Vaz also said, which bears frequent repetition: "... We must bear in mind that freedom of expression and freedom of the press [are] not necessarily the same thing. The late and esteemed journalist John Maxwell was fond of saying, and he was not original, 'Freedom of the press belongs to those who have one.' The press itself can become just another vested interest overshadowing or inhibiting freedom of expression."


CLARIFICATION: In response to last week's column, 'A marriage of convenience', which listed Dr Omar Davies among senior leaders of the PNP and the Government it formed who had expressed views about Portia Simpson Miller similar to those expressed by Dr Peter Phillips, Dr Davies has emailed to set the record straight. "I have never," he says, "expressed any such views about Mrs Simpson Miller, either publicly, or in private. When I contested for the position of PNP president, my explicit instruction was that no member of my team could comment on any other candidate - not just Mrs Simpson Miller." My apology.

Martin Henry is a communications consultant. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and medhen@gmail.com.