JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

Af­ter­math of Fazeer Mo­hammed dis­missal...

Gibbings: It's political

by

20101109

Dis­missed co�host of First Up, Fazeer Mo­hammed was "po­lit­i­cal­ly vic­timised" for his in­de­pen­dent per­for­mance on State-owned Caribbean New Me­dia Group (CN­MG).

This, ac­cord­ing to the pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Me­dia Work­ers Wes­ley Gib­bings. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day Gib­bings said: "I do not think any­one tru­ly be­lieves that Mr Mo­hammed was re­lieved of his du­ties for cost-cut­ting pur­pos­es, as ex­plained to him on Sat­ur­day. "Let's get that out of the way. "Even the more en­thu­si­as­tic sup­port­ers of his re­moval are not cit­ing any kind of fi­nan­cial chal­lenge as be­ing re­spon­si­ble for the move." Gib­bings echoed the ques­tions by the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (MATT) over Mo­hammed's "fir­ing." MATT in a re­lease, de­mand­ed "to know why and at what lev­el the de­ci­sion was tak­en to ter­mi­nate Mr Mo­hammed's em­ploy­ment with the sta­tion."

In a in­ter­view on Mon­day, Mo­hammed said he was not "fired" but "was tak­en off the pro­gramme." CN­MG's in­ter­im chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Ken Ali said the move was to fa­cil­i­tate "cost-cut­ting mea­sures." Gib­bings how­ev­er, said: "It is my per­son­al be­lief that Mr Mo­hammed was pun­ished for his line of ques­tion­ing on the is­sue of the Prime Min­is­ter's re­marks con­cern­ing as­sis­tance for Cari­com states fol­low­ing Hur­ri­cane Tomas. "It is al­so my un­der­stand­ing that a high lev­el of dis­com­fort with his per­for­mance as co�host of the pro­gramme had, in both the re­cent and dis­tant past, been ex­pressed by se­nior politi­cians.

"In oth­er words, Mr Mo­hammed has been po­lit­i­cal­ly vic­timised on ac­count of his in­de­pen­dent per­for­mance as a talk show host on the state-owned ra­dio and tele­vi­sion net­work." Mean­while, vet­er­an jour­nal­ist Raoul Pan­tin, who ex­pe­ri­enced a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion in 1975, said he "was to­tal­ly against it." He said he e-mailed Mo­hammed telling him not to wor­ry and re­mind­ed him of his own dis­missal by state-owned Ra­dio 610. "This is ridicu­lous. I think the Prime Min­is­ter has to make a state­ment about this. It is ab­surd."

Pan­tin said jour­nal­ists had to be free to re­port the news and voice their opin­ions since the Con­sti­tu­tion al­lowed free­dom of ex­pres­sion. He added: "The cir­cum­stances here are very sus­pi­cious." Gib­bings al­so hoped Mo­hammed's re­sponse "to an in­ap­pro­pri­ate ques­tion" was not a vi­o­la­tion of free ex­pres­sion or an in­fringe­ment of free­dom of the press with re­spect to the in­de­pen­dent per­for­mance of a me­dia op­er­a­tive.

Sup­port for Fazeer

The de­ci­sion by Ali to re­move Mo­hammed from the talk show which is co-host­ed by Jessie May Ven­tour has sparked con­tention among loy­al First Up fans and oth­er con­cerned cit­i­zens. Sup­port was demon­strat­ed via three pages on so­cial net­work­ing site � Face­book. Jus­tice for Fazeer Mo­hammed, We Sup­port Fazeer Mo­hammed and We Sup­port Fazeer Mo­hammed! We Stand Up for Jus­tice and Free­dom Of Speech are some of the com­ments from up­set and an­gry sup­port­ers. Sev­er­al peo­ple al­so stat­ed they had stopped view­ing the show.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored