Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

The Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (MATT) is ex­pect­ed to is­sue a state­ment to­day in re­sponse to Works and Trans­port Min­ster Colm Im­bert's re­marks that the me­dia are not bal­anced in their re­port­ing.

Im­bert, in an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian on Sun­day, had stat­ed the lo­cal me­dia were "not bal­anced in re­port­ing every­thing." His re­sponse was trig­gered when ques­tioned about Gov­ern­ment's re­ac­tion over the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing Calder Hart and the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) and re­cent state­ments made by Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. Yes­ter­day, MATT's pres­i­dent Mar­lan Hopink­son and vice pres­i­dent Judy Ray­mond said the ex­ec­u­tive was meet­ing to dis­cuss the mat­ter and a re­sponse would be is­sued to­day. Im­bert had said:"The me­dia has every right to choose to pub­lish what­ev­er it wants as it is an in­de­pen­dent, free press. "If peo­ple want to pub­lish a blank page that is their busi­ness and their right. "But where I think the me­dia are go­ing wrong is in choos­ing to re­port in a one-sided way but al­so claim­ing to be fair and bal­anced." For­mer Trinidad Guardian ed­i­tor-in-chief Lennox Grant in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day said the me­dia op­er­at­ed on a se­lec­tive process. He said: "Some things get played up and some get played down. Some things are con­sid­ered more news­wor­thy than oth­ers." Grant said the me­dia had to re­port on the Gov­ern­ment. He added: "That is how it should be. The Gov­ern­ment must get scruti­ny. Every­thing Oba­ma (US Pres­i­dent) does is news and they are not al­ways favourable.

"Peo­ple here re­port the news as they get it and re­port it to peo­ple who are in­ter­est­ed... peo­ple are sup­posed to be in­ter­est­ed." He added al­though the me­dia were "heav­i­ly flawed, we op­er­ate a free me­dia." Grant said Gov­ern­ment was not get­ting enough crit­i­cism es­pe­cial­ly when is­sues, such as crime, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and the man­age­ment of the econ­o­my, were not be­ing prop­er­ly ad­dressed. "They get away with a lot and I am not sym­pa­thet­ic at all with the Gov­ern­ment," he said. Omatie Ly­der, man­ag­ing ed­i­tor at the Ex­press, said the me­dia were guid­ed by what hap­pens on any giv­en day. She said: "We don't have time to sit and plot. A news­pa­per is a re­flec­tion of what is hap­pen­ing on the ground." She said a news­pa­per does not sin­gle out any par­tic­u­lar news item ex­cept for it news­wor­thi­ness. "A news­pa­per is a re­flec­tion of what is hap­pen­ing on the ground," Ly­der added. An­tho­ny Wil­son, Trinidad Guardian's act­ing ed­i­tor-in-chief, re­fut­ed Im­bert's claims. He said: "As far as Min­is­ter Im­bert, specif­i­cal­ly, and the Gov­ern­ment gen­er­al­ly, the Guardian's cov­er­age is ab­solute­ly fair and bal­anced. "By at­tack­ing the me­dia it seems the Gov­ern­ment is at­tempt­ing to dis­tract the pop­u­la­tion from its at­ten­tion on the is­sues of the fi­nanc­ing of the church at the Heights of Gua­napo by the spir­i­tu­al ad­vis­er of the Prime Min­is­ter and the is­sues sur­round­ing the res­ig­na­tion of Ude­cott's ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart."

Wil­son said the Guardian had no po­lit­i­cal al­le­giances. "I can state cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly and with­out fear of con­tra­dic­tion that the Guardian has no po­lit­i­cal al­le­giances and stands ready to re­port in a fair and bal­anced man­ner, any par­ty that forms the Gov­ern­ment," he said. Re­spond­ing to Im­bert's claim "when some­thing is un­favourable to the Gov­ern­ment it is giv­en promi­nence and front page," Wil­son said that was un­true. He said: "I chal­lenge the min­is­ter to pro­duce proof of that al­le­ga­tion with re­gard to the Guardian. "The Guardian's news val­ues are dri­ven by what is news­wor­thy, what is time­ly, what is unique and oth­er el­e­ments that go in­to the de­ci­sions that we make on a dai­ly ba­sis."