The Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MATT) said yes­ter­day it "is deeply dis­turbed by the re­cent de­vel­op­ments at state-owned Caribbean New Me­dia Group (CN­MG)." The as­so­ci­a­tion, in a news re­lease, stat­ed it want­ed to know why Fazeer Mo­hammed, one of the hosts of the First Up pro­gramme, was re­lieved of du­ty and at what lev­el the de­ci­sion was tak­en to ter­mi­nate his em­ploy­ment at sta­tion.

Fol­low­ing is the as­so­ci­a­tion's state­ment:

"With re­gard to the fir­ing of Fazeer Mo­hammed, one of the hosts of the First Up pro­gramme, the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion would like to know why and at what lev­el the de­ci­sion was tak­en to ter­mi­nate Mr Mo­hammed's em­ploy­ment with the sta­tion. "MATT would al­so ap­pre­ci­ate an ex­pla­na­tion as to its tim­ing. "Mr Mo­hammed was fired with­out warn­ing last Sat­ur­day, two days af­ter he in­ter­viewed a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter who ap­peared to be dis­pleased by his line of ques­tion­ing. "The Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion hopes CN­MG can give a cat­e­gor­i­cal as­sur­ance that there was no causal con­nec­tion be­tween those two events.

"In MATT's view, Mr Mo­hammed was con­duct­ing the in­ter­view in a pro­fes­sion­al man­ner and was rais­ing ques­tions and con­cerns shared by many mem­bers of the pub­lic, both lo­cal­ly and over­seas. "The tim­ing of his dis­missal, how­ev­er, gives the im­pres­sion that he was pe­nalised for do­ing his job. "What­ev­er the rea­son for the ter­mi­na­tion of Mr Mo­hammed's em­ploy­ment, it was a very se­ri­ous er­ror of judge­ment to re­place him with Andy John­son, head of Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (GISL). "The Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion has the great­est re­spect for Mr John­son, who was a lead­ing prac­ti­tion­er in the field for many years. "How­ev­er, Mr John­son is no longer a prac­tis­ing jour­nal­ist, but is now clear­ly aligned with the Gov­ern­ment of the day.

"His ob­jec­tives and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as head of GISL are there­fore in di­rect con­flict with those of an in­de­pen­dent jour­nal­ist. "For Mr John­son to be giv­en the role of host of a news pro­gramme at CN­MG, a state-owned me­dia house, gives the im­pres­sion that the Gov­ern­ment views CN­MG as an ex­ten­sion of GISL. "In fact, how­ev­er, CN­MG is in­tend­ed to work in the pub­lic in­ter­est to pro­vide in­de­pen­dent news and opin­ion. "Mr John­son's host­ing of the pro­gramme, es­pe­cial­ly in the wake of Mr Mo­hammed's ouster, will make it ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult for CN­MG to be seen as a source of un­bi­ased in­for­ma­tion. "The Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion there­fore hopes that Mr John­son's stint as host of First Up will be brought to a rapid end and that he will be im­me­di­ate­ly re­placed by some­one who has no such con­flict of in­ter­est and is cur­rent­ly qual­i­fied for this par­tic­u­lar job."