In de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­eties, part of the me­dia's role is sup­posed to be to in­form peo­ple so that they can make ed­u­cat­ed choic­es. In such po­lit­i­cal sys­tems, the me­dia act on be­half of the com­mon peo­ple to en­sure that politi­cians do their job. The me­dia, there­fore, in­clude a di­ver­si­ty of voic­es and po­lit­i­cal opin­ions, and seeks a fair bal­ance of news and views.

The me­dia, how­ev­er, are not nec­es­sar­i­ly im­par­tial re­porters of events. In­deed, im­par­tial­i­ty may be the ex­cep­tion rather than the rule. Amer­i­ca's high­ly prof­itable Fox News chan­nel (part of Ru­pert Mur­doch's News Cor­po­ra­tion) is un­afraid to say what it thinks and is pros­per­ing as a re­sult. Oth­er ex­am­ples in­clude the Al-Jazeera tele­vi­sion net­work, with its un­abashed sup­port for Arab re­form, and The Econ­o­mist news mag­a­zine, which has pro­mot­ed free trade, in­ter­na­tion­al­ism and min­i­mum in­ter­fer­ence from gov­ern­ment since 1843.

As The Econ­o­mist it­self has not­ed, the idea that jour­nal­ists should be "im­par­tial" in re­port­ing news is, in fact, a rel­a­tive­ly re­cent one, and finds most sup­port in Amer­i­ca. In Eu­rope, the mag­a­zine notes that overt par­ti­san­ship in news­pa­pers is wide­spread and state-run tele­vi­sion chan­nels of­ten have par­ty al­le­giances.

Last week­end, in a Sun­day Guardian in­ter­view, Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion De­vant Ma­haraj said re­porters should de­clare their po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tions. SHEREEN ALI asked free­lance jour­nal­ist Wes­ley Gib­bings about this and re­lat­ed is­sues.Wes­ley Gib­bings is the found­ing pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Me­di­a­Work­ers, deputy con­venor of the In­ter­na­tion­al Free­dom of Ex­pres­sion Ex­change and mem­ber of the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee of the Glob­al Fo­rum for Me­dia De­vel­op­ment.

Q: Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj re­cent­ly called for re­porters to de­clare their po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tions. He says he was sup­port­ing In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Viera who said that me­dia in­di­vid­u­als or busi­ness­es with po­lit­i­cal agen­das should be hon­est with the pop­u­la­tion and de­clare their hand. Do you agree?

Should jour­nal­ists be open about any fi­nan­cial in­ter­ests or po­lit­i­cal lean­ings that may colour their re­port­ing? And should jour­nal­ists, there­fore, al­so pro­vide much more de­tail on their source ma­te­r­i­al, to en­able their au­di­ences to eval­u­ate the strength of their sto­ries?

A: Both Min­is­ter Ma­haraj, who should know bet­ter be­cause he has some knowl­edge of how me­dia work, and Sen­a­tor Viera are fail­ing to make a dis­tinc­tion be­tween me­dia hous­es and the jour­nal­ists who work with­in them. They al­so ap­pear not to have con­sid­ered the fact that jour­nal­is­tic con­tent, par­tic­u­lar­ly in broad­cast me­dia, con­sti­tutes but one com­po­nent of over­all me­dia out­put.

What ob­tains in some coun­tries is that some me­dia hous­es, the print me­dia in par­tic­u­lar, ex­er­cise the op­tion to de­clare their ed­i­to­r­i­al po­si­tions or sup­port or lack of sup­port for po­lit­i­cal par­ties, and par­tic­u­lar pub­lic pol­i­cy is­sues.I can­not think of a sin­gle sit­u­a­tion (in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try of course, be­cause au­to­crat­ic states are a dif­fer­ent thing al­to­geth­er) in which in­di­vid­ual jour­nal­ists have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly de­clared their po­lit­i­cal pref­er­ences or al­le­giances as a mat­ter of choice or oblig­a­tion.

In­deed, most jour­nal­ists vote at elec­tion time and, there­fore, ex­press a po­lit­i­cal pref­er­ence on that oc­ca­sion. But does this chal­lenge some­one's in­de­pen­dence of thought? Mr Viera, for in­stance, is an in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor. If he vot­ed in the last elec­tion, didn't he ex­press a po­lit­i­cal pref­er­ence? Us­ing his log­ic, he should per­haps be telling the coun­try and the world how he vot­ed in the last elec­tion.

It is said that the role of the me­dia is to in­form, en­ter­tain and ed­u­cate. But for many me­dia, their role has al­so been to in­flu­ence and to per­suade. Should a mass medi­um strive to be im­par­tial in or­der to give the fullest cov­er­age pos­si­ble to its au­di­ence? Or should it be free to em­brace a nar­row­er, more par­ti­san ap­proach? Should re­spectable news or­gan­i­sa­tions strive to be fair and bal­anced, or not?

The val­ue of me­dia out­put as a whole needs to be dis­cussed along­side the work of jour­nal­ists be­cause they are not the same. Con­tent in the mass me­dia is a mish-mash of en­ter­tain­ment, ed­u­ca­tion­al ma­te­r­i­al, satire, com­men­tary, opin­ion, analy­sis and news. When it comes to news, there is no op­tion but to be fair, bal­anced and ac­cu­rate.

Colum­nists and oth­er con­tent providers in both print and broad­cast me­dia are not nec­es­sar­i­ly un­der any oblig­a­tion to meet the same stan­dards, though this would be use­ful. A news­pa­per colum­nist or talk show host is ful­ly en­ti­tled to state his or her per­son­al view on pub­lic is­sues.

This rep­re­sents opin­ion. Opin­ion has the char­ac­ter­is­tic of freely ex­press­ing some­one's pref­er­ence or al­le­giance or con­vic­tion. In free so­ci­eties, the abil­i­ty to do so is sa­cred. It is a pil­lar of free­dom of ex­pres­sion. The opin­ion lead­ers, satirists, co­me­di­ans, artists all have a role to play in mass me­dia.

Do you think there is po­lit­i­cal bias in the mass me­dia in T&T? If yes, to what de­gree? What about the role of state-owned me­dia?

For the most part, I do not be­lieve that there is in­sti­tu­tion­alised, sys­tem­at­ic po­lit­i­cal bias in the lo­cal me­dia. It might be that some op­er­a­tives in the State me­dia are of the be­lief that it is their role to fa­cil­i­tate the use of con­tent in sup­port of whichev­er par­ty is in pow­er. This, of course, is wrong and is an abuse of their po­si­tions but is some­thing that has spanned po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions, in­clud­ing the cur­rent one. Hope­ful­ly, this will change in the fu­ture.

Some me­dia op­er­a­tives do in­deed have dif­fi­cul­ty con­tain­ing their po­lit­i­cal en­thu­si­asm and this some­times, but not al­ways, has an im­pact on jour­nal­is­tic con­tent. It is the role of en­light­ened me­dia lead­er­ship to weed this out, be­cause it de­stroys the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the me­dia house both as a com­mer­cial en­ter­prise and as a place where peo­ple go to de­rive the truth about our so­ci­ety.The state me­dia are par­tic­u­lar­ly prob­lem­at­ic when it comes to this. I have not seen the sit­u­a­tion change over the years. But it needs to change.

Do pri­vate­ly-owned me­dia hous­es, as pri­vate busi­ness­es, have any du­ty to make their ed­i­to­r­i­al poli­cies pub­lic? Shouldn't this be up to the me­dia own­ers?

News­pa­pers in fact make their ed­i­to­r­i­al po­si­tions, as an in­sti­tu­tion, pub­lic via their ed­i­to­ri­als. But this does not mean that a news ed­i­tor nec­es­sar­i­ly sends re­porters out in the field with the in­junc­tion to find in­for­ma­tion to sup­port such po­si­tions post fac­to. In fact, my ex­pe­ri­ence is that po­si­tions on pub­lic is­sues are usu­al­ly de­vel­oped fol­low­ing a pe­ri­od of jour­nal­is­tic in­quiry and not the oth­er way around. Noth­ing is wrong with that.

What is the oblig­a­tion of our me­dia work­ers in a small is­land where we al­ready have a cul­ture that is po­lit­i­cal­ly in­ces­tu­ous–and at times volatile? How should me­dia work­ers ne­go­ti­ate the many is­sues and po­ten­tial con­flicts? What should guide them?

I am a be­liev­er in codes of pro­fes­sion­al con­duct for jour­nal­ists and strin­gent ap­pli­ca­tion of them by me­dia em­ploy­ers. Not all my col­leagues agree this should be a func­tion of the in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions process, but I think it should be.Such val­ues are non-ne­go­tiable and not sub­ject to cul­tur­al speci­fici­ty.Codes of con­duct sup­port­ed by strong ed­i­tors are an un­beat­able com­bi­na­tion. Through this, jour­nal­ists can best ne­go­ti­ate pret­ty over­whelm­ing com­mer­cial and po­lit­i­cal forces.

Can in­di­vid­u­als or even the me­dia ever hope to be tru­ly ob­jec­tive, as the very se­lec­tion and fram­ing of me­dia con­tent in­volves sub­jec­tive val­ue judg­ments? How can ideals of ob­jec­tiv­i­ty be en­cour­aged or main­tained?

This is a very old and in­ter­est­ing dis­cus­sion, set­tle­ment of which I am yet to see. But it is a per­va­sive con­sid­er­a­tion span­ning a wide range of pro­fes­sion­al pur­suits. The key to it though is free­dom of ex­pres­sion. Through free­dom of ex­pres­sion all ideas con­tend. All in­ter­pre­ta­tions of re­al­i­ty are placed in the pub­lic do­main. This is how it ought to be–what­ev­er we think of the sub­jec­tiv­i­ty or ob­jec­tiv­i­ty of sub­stan­tive con­tent. Free­dom has many re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, but in or­der to be re­spon­si­ble you of­ten need to be free.

Jour­nal­ists can­not be free to be re­spon­si­ble if there is an en­vi­ron­ment in which in­for­ma­tion is sup­pressed or peo­ple are pun­ished in one way or the oth­er for the views they ex­press. Such a sit­u­a­tion pro­motes one-sid­ed­ness and tac­it bias.