Renowned jour­nal­ist, Jones P. Madeira has died.

Madeira's fam­i­ly has con­firmed that the Trinidad and To­ba­go jour­nal­ist passed away to­day, Jan­u­ary 10 at the Mount Hope Med­ical Com­plex.

Madeira was 80 years old and had been hos­pi­talised for the last week, af­ter ail­ing for some time from a num­ber of se­ri­ous med­ical con­di­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment by the fam­i­ly, Madeira’s wife of 53 years, Mel­ba, his daugh­ters Melanie and Lo­rilee, and son Justin "ex­tend their thanks to the staff of the Mount Hope Hos­pi­tal for the care and com­fort ex­tend­ed to Jones dur­ing the last week of his life, mak­ing his fi­nal days as com­fort­able as was pos­si­ble in his con­di­tion."

“Jones P.”, as he was pop­u­lar­ly known, a na­tive of Ari­ma, had his finest hour as a jour­nal­ist/pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tor when he turned his hostage con­di­tion, made so by for­mer head of the Ja­maat Al Mus­limeen, Imam Yasin Abu Bakr and his in­sur­gents at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion (TTT) build­ing on Ju­ly 27, 1990, in­to be­ing a fa­cil­i­ta­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the Bakr in­sur­gents and the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force.

It was this se­ries of com­mu­ni­ca­tions that as­sist­ed in pre­vent­ing a vi­o­lent con­test be­tween the in­sur­gents and the army which re­sult­ed in Bakr’s sur­ren­der to the army, led then by Colonel Joseph Theodore.

Due to his role dur­ing this time, Madeira was award­ed the Cha­co­nia Gold Medal, the sec­ond-high­est na­tion­al award. He al­so re­ceived the Hon­orary Doc­tor of Let­ters PhD from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go.  

Jones start­ed his ca­reer as a young re­porter in the ear­ly 1960s.

Madeira spent two years at the world-fa­mous British Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (BBC) in Lon­don, as a mem­ber of the Caribbean Ser­vice.

Over the decades of his jour­nal­is­tic ca­reer, Madeira worked with Caribbean me­dia in­sti­tu­tions such as the Caribbean Broad­cast­ing Union and at the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at where he pro­duced ra­dio pro­grammes for me­dia sta­tions across the re­gion.  

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, Madeira be­came the Head of News and Cur­rent Af­fairs at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion (TTT) in the 1980s. He then moved to the Trinidad Broad­cast­ing Net­work.

His last two ma­jor po­si­tions as a jour­nal­ist were as Ed­i­tor-in-Chief at the Trinidad Guardian and the Trinidad News­day.  

Madeira wore many hats af­ter leav­ing the jour­nal­ism sphere. He had a dis­tin­guished ca­reer as Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Di­rec­tor at the Caribbean Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Cen­tre (CAREC) where he pro­duced ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­grammes and events to in­form the re­gion on how to re­duce the spread of HIV and AIDS.

Then, a stint as the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Ju­di­cia­ry, op­er­at­ing un­der the di­rec­tion of Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie. He al­so held the po­si­tion of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er of the Min­istry of Health un­der min­is­ters John Ra­hael and Jer­ry Nar­race.

Through all of his jour­nal­is­tic po­si­tions, Madeira worked with sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions of jour­nal­ists and emerg­ing re­porters to keep T&T and the re­gion up­dat­ed, in­formed and ad­vised on the is­sues of the day, and how such mat­ters im­pact­ed the lives of peo­ple.