Pao­lo Ker­na­han

There was an in­ter­est­ing de­vel­op­ment this week, though it was like­ly over­shad­owed by the US pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. A meet­ing of gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives was held that in­clud­ed the now-con­tro­ver­sial Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Ja­mal Mo­hammed and or­gan­i­sa­tions rep­re­sent­ing me­dia hous­es.

Ja­mal Mo­hammed first shot in­to the in­creas­ing­ly-crowd­ed spot­light with his self-de­scrip­tion in Par­lia­ment as "dumb" and a "no­body." If he was try­ing to el­e­vate him­self in­to the na­tion­al dis­course he cer­tain­ly did so, al­beit for all the wrong rea­sons.

He de­vel­oped this trend in ap­palling fash­ion with a de­base­ment of his own eth­nic­i­ty. In­ward racism could hard­ly be con­sid­ered an of­fense so, in my opin­ion, this was the less­er of the evils con­tained in that wordy and slight­ly creepy mis­sive he sent to a me­dia house.

In that es­say, he be­moaned "a clear bias" against the Gov­ern­ment. This was a har­bin­ger of more sin­is­ter things to come. At this week's meet­ing, the Gov­ern­ment pressed its claim for two hours of broad­cast time to con­vey the "good works" of this ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The seething dis­dain that gov­ern­ments have nur­tured in their bo­soms for the me­dia is quite nor­mal. Many politi­cians have, in the past, ex­ert­ed more than mere in­flu­ence on the ed­i­to­r­i­al pre­rog­a­tive of our me­dia hous­es. The lat­est man­i­fes­ta­tion of this laugh­ably bor­ing and re­cur­ring dec­i­mal is some­what dif­fer­ent.

From what I un­der­stand, Gov­ern­ment is propos­ing to op­ti­mise a com­pul­so­ry air­time en­ti­tle­ment of the broad­cast li­cens­es by ap­pro­pri­at­ing five min­utes in each broad­cast hour of the day to meet their "good news of the Gov­ern­ment" ob­jec­tive.

Suzanne Shep­pard, pres­i­dent of the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion (MATT), clanged the alarm bells over this lat­est sal­vo. The sound bite con­veyed her con­cerns of the com­mer­cial im­pli­ca­tions of this gov­ern­ment im­po­si­tion. State pro­gram­ming would have the ef­fect of scat­ter­ing view­ers with a con­se­quent drop in ad­ver­tis­ing.

There is a stronger ar­gu­ment which I am sure she ex­plored in a length­i­er in­ter­view. The forc­ing of gov­ern­ment's will up­on in­de­pen­dent, pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions of our democ­ra­cy is down­right dan­ger­ous.

The ar­gu­ment ad­vanced by the State is that the me­dia hous­es refuse to il­lu­mi­nate the pos­i­tives of the regime. This is re­al­ly old and tired but I am doubt­ful whether you can find any­where in the li­cense agree­ment held by the sta­tions a broad­ly ap­plic­a­ble re­quire­ment to sing the gospel of the State.

There is al­ready a li­cense al­lot­ment; the Gov­ern­ment can use that for as much back-slap­ping as it likes. GISL (Goeb­bles In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices Ltd) cur­rent­ly takes ad­van­tage of this through sev­er­al state-ori­ent­ed tele­vi­sion fea­tures. On the face of it, it would seem that the Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to widen its in­flu­ence across the broad­cast day with this strat­e­gy that is ut­ter­ly bereft of any thought.

Much de­pends up­on whom the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship is try­ing to court. There was a re­cent "in­ter­view pan­el" on CN­MG fea­tur­ing five gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and Hans­ley Ad­jo­ha who could eas­i­ly have been re­placed by a teleprompter. That ses­sion had the feel of an old-boys gath­er­ing; fel­las yukking it up on the tele­vi­sion.

There were no polls but judg­ing from what I read on­line, most were nau­se­at­ed by the broad­cast. The net re­sult of that out­reach strat­e­gy was that the Gov­ern­ment sent an ar­son­ist to ex­tin­guish a blaze.

What was con­ceived as a mea­sure to vault past the stri­dent crit­i­cisms of the Op­po­si­tion and the pub­lic at large sim­ply en­raged al­ready shell-shocked op­po­nents of the Gov­ern­ment reel­ing from the steady bom­bard­ment of scan­dals and wor­ry­ing ac­cu­sa­tions swirling around this ad­min­is­tra­tion. The kicksin' at­mos­phere on the set al­so served to fur­ther po­larise the so­ci­ety.

Of all of the for­mer me­dia work­ers now com­fort­ably en­sconced in the warm bo­som of the State as "ad­vi­sors," not one of them seems mind­ed to out­line the patent­ly ob­vi­ous to even the most ob­tuse among us.

The Hanse­ly Ad­jho­da-led farce that evening could nev­er hope to con­vince brain­washed PNM cultists; nei­ther could it as­suage the fears of those who gam­bled on this Gov­ern­ment in 2010. UNC sup­port­ers will feed in what­ev­er pas­ture they are teth­ered so ap­peal­ing to them is un­nec­es­sary.

Apro­pos, the gov­ern­ment's re­vised strat­e­gy of head-lock­ing the me­dia in­to broad­cast­ing its sun­ny agen­da is seed dis­persed on bar­ren soil. What­ev­er time is ap­pro­pri­at­ed for this pur­pose will be used by view­ers to go to the toi­let or feed the dogs.

The PP Gov­ern­ment would do well to se­cure the ser­vices of ex­pe­ri­enced pub­lic re­la­tions pro­fes­sion­als who can guide them on the prop­er method of dis­sem­i­na­tion of in­for­ma­tion deemed crit­i­cal to their ob­jec­tives. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, such ex­per­tise would as­sist in stream­lin­ing the uni­fied mes­sage of the Gov­ern­ment through its op­er­a­tives rather than one min­is­ter blurt­ing out some­thing out­ra­geous each day and hav­ing the rest of the Cab­i­net play­ing catch up.

Last but not least, the best thing the Gov­ern­ment could do is ac­knowl­edge all of the very se­ri­ous con­cerns en­gag­ing the pub­lic, learn from them and make dis­cernible changes in the cur­rent style of gov­er­nance. Bad news has a longer shelf life than good news and all the air­time in the world, com­man­deered or not, will nev­er change that.