Al­though mis­un­der­stood by many, the me­dia's role in en­sur­ing a free flow of in­for­ma­tion, ideas and opin­ions re­mains a crit­i­cal el­e­ment in main­tain­ing a healthy, ful­ly func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy. That is so even as rapid tech­no­log­i­cal and so­cial de­vel­op­ments are chang­ing how the me­dia reach the mass­es around the world. As the in­dus­try evolves be­yond tra­di­tion­al news­pa­pers, ra­dio and tele­vi­sion out­lets and now in­cludes an ar­ray of so­cial net­works ac­cessed elec­tron­i­cal­ly by an as­sort­ment of desk­top and mo­bile elec­tron­ic de­vices, one thing re­mains con­stant-the role of the news me­dia as a "watch­dog" has not changed. The prop­er de­vel­op­ment of any coun­try is not pos­si­ble with­out jour­nal­ists to ques­tion the ac­tions of gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, con­firm the truth of what of­fi­cials tell the pub­lic and gath­er facts that cit­i­zens need to make in­formed de­ci­sions. That is ex­act­ly what hap­pened when the T&T Guardian broke the sto­ry about the Au­gust 31 procla­ma­tion of Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictible Pro­ceed­ings) Act, alert­ing the na­tion to de­vel­op­ments which had se­ri­ous, very neg­a­tive im­pli­ca­tions for the prop­er gov­er­nance of this coun­try.

It is in­evitable that be­cause the me­dia car­ry out this very im­por­tant func­tion, their re­la­tion­ship with politi­cians is of­ten an­tag­o­nis­tic. Jour­nal­ism, when prop­er­ly prac­tised, fre­quent­ly casts an un­com­fort­able spot­light on elect­ed and se­lect­ed gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion of­fi­cials to en­sure that they up­hold their oaths of of­fice and car­ry out the jobs they were placed in po­lit­i­cal of­fice to do. Some politi­cians would pre­fer me­dia hous­es to be their un­of­fi­cial pub­lic-re­la­tions out­lets, churn­ing out on­ly ar­ti­cles and sound­bites that make them look good. To do so, how­ev­er, would be to un­der­mine a very vi­tal and healthy el­e­ment of T&T's democ­ra­cy. It is clear that Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley is among the many T&T politi­cians who do not un­der­stand the role of the me­dia. In his Re­pub­lic Day mes­sage the PNM po­lit­i­cal leader thanks the me­dia for do­ing their job, de­clar­ing that "the na­tion owes a deep debt of grat­i­tude to those vig­i­lant pro­fes­sion­als who work in the mass me­dia. These are the men and women who le­git­imise the doc­trine that the price of free­dom is eter­nal vig­i­lance." It is there­fore im­por­tant to re­mind Dr Row­ley that the T&T Guardian and oth­er oth­ers have been do­ing just that through­out suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments in T&T-not on­ly now with the cur­rent Sec­tion 34 de­ba­cle, but through­out every so­cial and po­lit­i­cal event that has caused up­heavals in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

From what he said yes­ter­day, it is ob­vi­ous that the Op­po­si­tion Leader does not ful­ly ap­pre­ci­ate that, as he said in his nice-sound­ing speech, the "role of the mass me­dia in pro­tect­ing us cit­i­zens from the ex­cess­es and in­dis­cre­tions of un­wor­thy lead­ers is not to be un­der­val­ued." It is strange how politi­cians can on­ly see that when they are in op­po­si­tion. Two years ago, the PNM was claim­ing the PP had in­fil­trat­ed the me­dia and was or­ches­trat­ing at­tacks on the gov­ern­ment of the day-Patrick Man­ning's PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion. At that time the hot-but­ton is­sues in­clud­ed the role of the Calder Hart-led Ude­cott in sev­er­al con­tro­ver­sial mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar con­struc­tion projects. Now the PP is in pow­er, mak­ing the same claims as their po­lit­i­cal ri­vals did lead­ing up to the May 24, 2010, gen­er­al elec­tion. Now, un­for­tu­nate­ly, the po­lit­i­cal tac­tics have changed, for the worse.

Par­ty sup­port­ers are be­ing briefed to cir­cu­late dis­taste­ful cam­paigns via wide­ly read e-mail fo­rums on re­porters who write ex­pos­es. The in­tegri­ty, per­son­al lives and men­tal health of these jour­nal­ists are be­ing tar­get­ed and of course their mo­ti­va­tion for writ­ing sto­ries that em­bar­rass one side or the oth­er are be­ing in­cor­rect­ly por­trayed as po­lit­i­cal. This is not on­ly un­der­hand and ma­li­cious but al­so mis­guid­ed and ill-in­formed. The Guardian doesn't sim­ply take any ma­te­r­i­al a re­porter pro­duces and pub­lish it ver­ba­tim. Sto­ries aimed at ex­pos­ing wrong­do­ing must be based on ac­cu­rate re­port­ing backed with doc­u­men­ta­tion and oth­er ev­i­dence where need­ed. They must be edit­ed to en­sure they are fair and bal­anced, must al­low the sub­ject the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­ply wher­ev­er pos­si­ble and must be in the pub­lic in­ter­est. This new­pa­per's slo­gan is "the Guardian of democ­ra­cy," and it has a rep­u­ta­tion for cred­i­ble and forth­right jour­nal­ism that it has up­held for 95 years-while politi­cians have come and gone.