MATT suf­fers from the chal­lenges that af­fect small vol­un­tary as­so­ci­a­tions: lack of funds, man­pow­er and re­sources. Few of its mem­bers are will­ing to con­tribute the time and en­er­gy need­ed to keep the or­gan­i­sa­tion run­ning.

It's iron­ic that an as­so­ci­a­tion made up of jour­nal­ists is as lit­tle known and so much mis­un­der­stood as the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion. Its mem­bers are in the busi­ness of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and yet they have strug­gled for the past two decades to get their mes­sage across and to ral­ly their col­leagues to the cause.

The aims of the as­so­ci­a­tion are to de­fend the in­ter­ests of jour­nal­ists and to pro­mote high stan­dards of jour­nal­ism. No one can de­ny that those are wor­thy aims. And yet the as­so­ci­a­tion's ex­ec­u­tive at present finds it­self with­out a quo­rum, and is thus un­able to put any of its plans in­to ac­tion. For sev­er­al years now, too, MATT has found it im­pos­si­ble to hold the gala awards cer­e­mo­ny which was once the high­light of the jour­nal­is­tic cal­en­dar. The spon­sor­ship need­ed to host an event on such a grand scale has sim­ply not been forth­com­ing.

Worse still, the cor­po­rate cit­i­zens who give so gen­er­ous­ly to oth­er groups are re­luc­tant even to con­tribute to­wards the rel­a­tive­ly mi­nor cost of the sem­i­nars and work­shops that MATT puts on for its mem­bers from time to time. Aimed at im­prov­ing the skills and knowl­edge of the me­dia com­mu­ni­ty, these events are in­tend­ed to com­pen­sate as far as pos­si­ble for the wor­ry­ing ab­sence of train­ing of­fered by most me­dia hous­es.

It is pos­si­ble that these or­gan­i­sa­tions share some of the wide­spread mis­con­cep­tions about MATT, and are un­der the im­pres­sion that the group has some reg­u­lar and sub­stan­tial source of in­come. There is al­so a mis­tak­en be­lief that the group is a trade union, and that it pos­sess­es dis­ci­pli­nary pow­ers.

Even with­in the pro­fes­sion, there are mis­un­der­stand­ings about it: for in­stance, that on­ly re­porters are el­i­gi­ble to join. In fact, mem­ber­ship of MATT is al­so open to pho­tog­ra­phers, cam­era­men, sube­d­i­tors, and all the prac­ti­tion­ers of oth­er spe­cialised skills who pop­u­late news­rooms, as well as free­lancers.

MATT suf­fers from the chal­lenges that af­fect any small vol­un­tary as­so­ci­a­tion: lack of funds, man­pow­er and re­sources. Few of its mem­bers or po­ten­tial mem­bers are will­ing to con­tribute the time and en­er­gy need­ed to keep the or­gan­i­sa­tion run­ning, and it de­pends on the work of a few stal­warts.

But a me­dia or­gan­i­sa­tion has spe­cial prob­lems. Jour­nal­ists, by in­cli­na­tion and train­ing, are not be­liev­ers or join­ers. As prac­tised in this coun­try, their pro­fes­sion re­quires them to be scep­ti­cal and to re­frain from sup­port­ing po­lit­i­cal and so­cial caus­es, in case they are ac­cused of bias. It was for this rea­son that a cho­rus of dis­ap­proval en­sued af­ter the last gen­er­al elec­tion, when a num­ber of jour­nal­ists left the field for more lu­cra­tive jobs in the em­ploy of the Gov­ern­ment and the rul­ing par­ty.

Jour­nal­ism in Trinidad and To­ba­go, how­ev­er, is not a well-re­gard­ed pro­fes­sion, and this lack of re­spect is re­flect­ed in the re­mu­ner­a­tion of­fered by em­ploy­ers.

As a re­sult, with­in the sec­tor, there is a high turnover and lit­tle pro­fes­sion­al self-re­spect, and so it is a dif­fi­cult task to re­cruit new mem­bers for MATT and to main­tain strength of num­bers. Nev­er­the­less, when there is a cri­sis that af­fects jour­nal­ists, or an in­ci­dent in­volv­ing is­sues of jour­nal­is­tic stan­dards, the cry goes up: "What is MATT do­ing about it?"

Sad­ly, it does not seem to oc­cur to those mem­bers of the me­dia who are crit­i­cal of the or­gan­i­sa­tion that if they wish it to re­flect their views, they need to join it and make those views known; or that if they want it to do more, they should of­fer their time and their skills to make that fea­si­ble. It would be a pity if MATT were al­lowed to die now, through the ap­a­thy of those whose in­ter­ests it has tried to pro­mote for 20 years, of­ten at times when there was no one else to speak out on be­half of the me­dia.