Me­dia work­ers should be al­lowed to do their work with­out in­ter­fer­ence, once they do not ob­struct po­lice of­fi­cers, says Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith.

This is ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, af­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tives met with the top cop fol­low­ing an in­ci­dent where a re­porter and video­g­ra­ph­er from TV6 were threat­ened, and ob­struct­ed while on du­ty on Di­vali hol­i­day.

Mem­bers of their ex­ec­u­tive met with Grif­fith on Mon­day to dis­cuss the in­ci­dent along with “the larg­er is­sue of press free­dom and the me­dia’s abil­i­ty to per­form their du­ties with­out fear of in­tim­i­da­tion or in­ter­fer­ence from the TTPS,” the state­ment said.

At the meet­ing, the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s le­gal coun­sel, Dr Emir Crowne, said there were gen­er­al­ly no po­lice pow­ers to pro­hib­it film­ing, the tak­ing of pho­tographs or dig­i­tal im­ages in pub­lic spaces, un­less such ac­tiv­i­ties in­ter­fered with the po­lice in the per­for­mance of their du­ties.

Grif­fith apol­o­gised on be­half of the of­fi­cers’ who con­front­ed the me­dia who were film­ing peo­ple trapped in flood at El So­cor­ro.

He said he in­tends to re­mind his di­vi­sion­al com­man­ders of the need to treat me­dia work­ers with re­spect and the right of me­dia per­son­nel to cov­er events oc­cur­ring in pub­lic spaces with­out hin­drance.

Grif­fith agreed that free me­dia is es­sen­tial to the prop­er func­tion­ing of a democ­ra­cy and could not re­call any in­ci­dent in which me­dia work­ers ob­struct­ed the pro­tec­tive ser­vices from do­ing their jobs.

He, how­ev­er, ex­pressed con­cern about me­dia re­ports that may have been car­ried con­cern­ing the TTPS, or him­self, when no ap­par­ent at­tempt was made to con­tact him for bal­ance.

In re­sponse, MATT said it was a vol­un­tary, pro­fes­sion­al as­so­ci­a­tion and could not com­ment on any in­di­vid­ual sto­ry or me­dia house; but, said it was an es­tab­lished jour­nal­is­tic prac­tice to seek a re­sponse from all par­ties in­volved in a mat­ter, ex­cept where the sto­ry may be of ur­gency. In those sit­u­a­tions, a re­sponse is usu­al­ly sought for sub­se­quent sto­ries.

“In the end, the pub­lic in­ter­est and the pub­lic good are at the heart of both the me­dia’s mis­sion and polic­ing and for that we com­mend the Com­mis­sion­er for a can­did and con­cil­ia­to­ry di­a­logue,” the state­ment said.