A so­cial me­dia stand­off has emerged be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and British High Com­mis­sion­er Tim Stew over the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­ci­sion to write the British gov­ern­ment on the con­tents of a doc­u­men­tary, which Dr Row­ley con­tends has mis­rep­re­sent­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go.

On Mon­day, Row­ley crit­i­cised the doc­u­men­tary stat­ing that it mis­rep­re­sent­ed the gov­ern­ment’s treat­ment of Venezue­lan mi­grants.

He said that he in­tend­ed to write the British gov­ern­ment con­cern­ing the 15-minute re­port, which was avail­able to watch on so­cial me­dia in the past week.

In a so­cial me­dia post on Tues­day, the High Com­mis­sion­er said, “The Gov­ern­ment (of Trinidad and To­ba­go) have brought to my at­ten­tion a BBC doc­u­men­tary on Venezue­lan mi­grants. As I have said, the UK’s com­mit­ment to free­dom of ex­pres­sion means that the UK me­dia, in­clud­ing BBC, are in­de­pen­dent of the UK Gov­ern­ment.”

How­ev­er, the Prime Min­is­ter took to so­cial me­dia to re­spond.

He said, “In­de­pen­dent? The BBC gets bil­lions of pounds from the UK Gov­ern­ment to car­ry on their busi­ness. They mir­ror and re­flect British Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. The UK Gov­ern­ment de­ter­mines and caus­es all tele­vi­sion users to pay a li­cence fee to them. They send cod­ed mes­sages around the world for the British Gov­ern­ment. That is not the re­sponse we want from him. He must re­spond to whether the BBC pre­sent­ed our Venezue­lan sit­u­a­tion in a truth­ful and pro­fes­sion­al man­ner.”

On Mon­day, the Prime Min­is­ter al­so claimed he was not aware that BBC at­tempt­ed to con­tact him or any mem­ber of his gov­ern­ment con­cern­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

“I don’t know any BBC per­son had any dif­fi­cul­ty - if their mo­tive was ho­n­ourable- to speak to any gov­ern­ment mem­ber in­clud­ing my­self; I know of no such ap­proach, I’ve heard none of the min­is­ters speak about. This came like a bolt out of the night,” he said.

De­spite the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ments, the BBC is stand­ing by its stance that it at­tempt­ed to con­tact mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment for the doc­u­men­tary The Dis­placed.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed both the jour­nal­ist Ash­ley John-Bap­tiste and the video­g­ra­ph­er for the clip Olivia Lace-Evans con­cern­ing the doc­u­men­tary on Tues­day. They both re­ferred our ques­tions to the BBC’s Head of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Paul Ras­mussen.

In re­sponse to Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ments, the BBC said, “We stand by our jour­nal­ism. The es­ti­mat­ed num­ber of Venezue­lans in Trinidad was re­port­ed by UN­HCR, and has been cor­rob­o­rat­ed in mul­ti­ple re­ports. We reached out to the gov­ern­ment mul­ti­ple times for in­ter­view both be­fore re­port­ing in Trinidad, and while on the ground, but were de­clined. The thrust of this se­ries is about the life of those that are dis­placed and how they see life. This is the first of sev­er­al re­ports from around the world.”

The doc­u­men­tary has re­ceived mixed re­views from the pub­lic with many ques­tion­ing the de­ci­sion by the BBC to in­ter­view Kia “Rank­ing Boss” Ho­sein on the is­sue.

Ho­sein had been a part of an an­ti-mi­grant protest on the last day of the Venezue­lan reg­is­tra­tion on June 14.

Row­ley ques­tioned why the BBC al­lowed them­selves to be a part of their agen­da dur­ing his press con­fer­ence on Tues­day.

How­ev­er Venezue­lan ac­tivist Sofia Figueroa-Leon said she was baf­fled by the Prime Min­is­ter’s stance as much of what was cov­ered in the doc­u­men­tary had been in the pub­lic for some time.

“I re­al­ly do not think it’s a skewed mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion be­cause the in­for­ma­tion BBC gets is what we as cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go are giv­en by our gov­ern­ment. Even the Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor gave sev­er­al fig­ures in­clud­ing how much it would cost Trinidad and To­ba­go to have the Venezue­lan mi­grants in this coun­try, to which our Min­is­ter of Fi­nance said he was wrong. I re­al­ly don’t un­der­stand what is the anger,” Figueroa-Leon said in a phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia.

She said the gov­ern­ment had been do­ing work to help the mi­grants and as such, she did not un­der­stand the ap­proach tak­en by the Prime Min­is­ter, “I am baf­fled. At the end of the day, the gov­ern­ment does what it can do to help and they have done what they can to help the mi­grants. So if you know you are help­ing, why are you so up­set, why are you so an­gry?”