The T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTP­BA), in col­lab­o­ra­tion with blink | bmo­bile, host­ed its 12th an­nu­al Din­ner and Awards for Me­dia Ex­cel­lence re­cent­ly at the Jaf­fa at the Oval restau­rant in Port-of-Spain.

The event, which was held in recog­ni­tion of World Press Free­dom Day, re­wards per­sons in the in­dus­try whose pi­o­neer­ing ef­forts helped shape the me­dia land­scape.

The first of the 2016 awards went to late vet­er­an jour­nal­ist, Patrick Chookolin­go, pi­o­neer of the week­ly tabloid in Trinidad. The sec­ond award was giv­en to Rev­erend Dr Mar­garet El­cock, a broad­cast­er for over 20 years and the first woman to found a na­tion­al ra­dio sta­tion, Isaac 98.1 FM. Pop­u­lar DJ turned busi­ness­man, An­tho­ny Chow Lin On, aka Chi­nese Laun­dry, round­ed off the evening's awards for his achieve­ments in the broad­cast­ing sec­tor.

TTP­BA Pres­i­dent Daren Lee Sing opened the awards func­tion and re­mind­ed the guests that this year's World Press Free­dom Day theme is 'Ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion and fun­da­men­tal free­doms: This is your right'. Lee Sing not­ed that Trinidad con­tin­ues to be blessed with an in­de­pen­dent me­dia and said, "Let this oc­ca­sion serve as a re­minder to pub­lish­ers and broad­cast­ers that they are ac­count­able to the cit­i­zen­ry. We must nev­er com­pro­mise our­selves and con­ceal the truth but re­port and com­ment on the facts."

Camille Camp­bell, TSTT's Chief Mar­ket­ing Of­fi­cer wished every­one a hap­py World Press Free­dom Day and not­ed that TSTT, in its role as the on­ly na­tion­al full-ser­vice provider of com­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices, was com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that every­one had ac­cess to the tech­nol­o­gy that was fos­ter­ing dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ties with a larg­er voice to pro­mote so­cial im­prove­ment. Camp­bell stat­ed, "We are com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing to in­vest mil­lions of dol­lars in­to the evolv­ing tech­nol­o­gy that has be­come a pow­er­ful en­abler of so­ci­ety."

Camp­bell said blink | bmo­bile was pleased to part­ner once again with TTP­BA to ho­n­our in­di­vid­u­als from the me­dia whose ca­reers ex­em­pli­fied ex­cel­lence, and whose trail­blaz­ing tra­jec­to­ries played a sig­nif­i­cant role in shap­ing the me­dia land­scape of T&T.

She added: "On be­half of the man­age­ment and staff of TSTT, I wish to thank the TTP­BA for con­tin­u­ing to build on our part­ner­ship, and for re­main­ing true to the cause of giv­ing just due to the many me­dia work­ers up­on whose shoul­ders the me­dia in­dus­try is built."

Jim Clan­cy, an award-win­ning in­ter­na­tion­al broad­cast jour­nal­ist, de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress. Clan­cy had the au­di­ence cap­ti­vat­ed with a re­cap of his time spent cov­er­ing sto­ries in war-torn ter­ri­to­ries. He com­ment­ed that T&T was a for­tu­nate so­ci­ety and com­mend­ed the TTP­BA and the me­dia for the work they were do­ing. Clan­cy asked the at­ten­dees to ho­n­our the jour­nal­ists who sac­ri­ficed so much for their pro­fes­sion and said: "It's tru­ly an ho­n­our to be here with you to­day. Let us be jour­nal­ists who not on­ly ex­plore but in­spire. Let us re­solve to walk to­geth­er in courage here in Trinidad and To­ba­go. "

Max­ie Cuffie, Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador John L Estra­da at­tend­ed the awards func­tion, as well as rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T, Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T, As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Me­dia Work­ers, Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, Ad­ver­tis­ing As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T and the In­ter­na­tion­al Me­dia Cen­tre.