Melis­sa Doughty

The Draft Broad­cast Code is go­ing to be re­vis­it­ed with­in the next two months ac­cord­ing to Sel­by Wil­son, chair­man of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT). This comes af­ter Fix­in' T&T, head­ed by Kirk Wait­he wrote to the TATT on March 12 re­gard­ing the broad­cast of footage of crick­eter Runako Mor­ton who died in a car crash on CCN TV6's "Crime Watch" pro­gramme. The au­thor­i­ty re­spond­ed by send­ing a warn­ing let­ter to the tele­vi­sion sta­tion on March 13. The let­ter sent to the tele­vi­sion ad­vised TV6 that, "it is of the view that there was no pub­lic in­ter­est be­ing served in the air­ing of the dy­ing mo­ments of Mr Mor­ton and is al­so of the view that the air­ing of the pro­gramme may have con­sti­tut­ed an in­va­sion of pri­va­cy of Mr Mor­ton and his fam­i­ly." It said fur­ther that, "TV6 should en­sure that jour­nal­is­tic stan­dards be main­tained at all times and that con­tent which will gen­er­al­ly be con­sid­ered as un­suit­able for the view­ing by chil­dren not be aired dur­ing such pe­ri­ods when chil­dren are like­ly to be watch­ing tele­vi­sion and that the sen­si­bil­i­ties of all cit­i­zens are at all times tak­en in­to con­sid­er­a­tion in all pro­gram­ming."

Wait­he claims the me­dia house did noth­ing about the graph­ic con­tent it broad­cast. He said Fix­in' T&T plans to write an­oth­er let­ter to TATT about a "Crime Watch" pro­gramme two nights ago which in­clud­ed im­ages of a bleed­ing corpse. "It is ob­vi­ous that TATT's words have fall­en on deaf ears. This was ap­par­ent from the 'Crime Watch' pro­gramme two nights ago," Wait­he said. How­ev­er, Wil­son says writ­ing a let­ter to TV6 is all TATT can do since there is no broad­cast code in ef­fect. "We can­not take greater ac­tion like sus­pend any­one's li­cence since we don't have an ap­proved broad­cast code. The last gov­ern­ment left it for the whole of their term," he said. Wil­son said the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion is go­ing to re­vis­it the broad­cast code with­in two months. "There was al­ready care­ful con­sul­ta­tion on the code, but the last gov­ern­ment nev­er ad­vanced the process. The present ad­min­is­tra­tion said the code is wa­ter un­der the bridge and the process is not go­ing to be com­plete­ly re­done, but there will be one last con­sul­ta­tion," he said.

Wait­he said his group is com­mit­ted to as­sist­ing TATT with the code be­cause there needs to be reg­u­la­tion of con­tent. "We want to as­sist TATT in every way we can. I be­lieve when they (me­dia) show im­ages like these it is an in­sult to the pub­lic. It de­sen­si­tis­es the pub­lic to the sanc­ti­ty of hu­man life and it is in poor taste. "Their show­ing of this con­tent is in­con­sis­tent with the val­ues of the OCM (One Caribbean Me­dia) group," he said. Wait­he felt me­dia hous­es should not wait for the code to come in­to ef­fect to do what is right. "Me­dia hous­es like CCN TV6 should take that step on their own. Me­dia hous­es should not be in­ca­pable of gov­ern­ing them­selves," he said. He stressed Fix­in' T&T's com­mit­ment to free­dom of the press but said the code was nec­es­sary. "A ro­bust, free me­dia is crit­i­cal to a democ­ra­cy, but there are ba­sic tenets of good me­dia and those in­clude re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, pri­va­cy and good taste," Wait­he said.