Sean Nero

Ma­jor­i­ty state-owned Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) will con­tin­ue to in­vest mil­lions in T&T's in­for­ma­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor even as it deals with the ef­fects of the eco­nom­ic down­turn, chief mar­ket­ing of­fi­cer Camille Camp­bell said on Tues­day night.

In re­marks at the T&T Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TP­BA) an­nu­al din­ner and awards cer­e­mo­ny at Jaf­fa Restau­rant, Queen's Park Oval, she said: "Dig­i­tal me­dia has re­al­ly been a lib­er­at­ing phe­nom­e­non with all the at­ten­dant promis­es and ac­com­pa­ny­ing pit­falls. The pres­ence of es­tab­lished me­dia in these spaces has had the pos­i­tive ef­fect of giv­ing con­sumers the op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pare side by side, the re­li­a­bil­i­ty of con­tent that is fash­ion by prin­ci­pals of jour­nal­ism and con­tent that may be pas­sion­ate.

"As the on­ly na­tion­al full ser­vice provider of com­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices, TSTT is com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that every­one has ac­cess to the tech­nol­o­gy that is fos­ter­ing dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ties, dig­i­tal con­ver­sa­tions, dig­i­tal ad­vo­ca­cy and dig­i­tal co-or­di­na­tion that has reached such crit­i­cal mass that is has pro­voked in­di­vid­u­als and in­sti­tu­tions of the state to take ac­tion in cas­es that, in the past, would have been ig­nored.

"Tech­nol­o­gy has em­pow­ered or­di­nary in­di­vid­u­als to cast a pow­er­ful and far reach­ing spot­light on the un-at­trac­tive depths of our so­ci­ety and forces peo­ple to act."

Camp­bell praised me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers and own­ers for the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty they demon­strat­ed when they em­braced self-reg­u­la­tion. When there were calls for re­vi­sion of cen­sor­ship mea­sures, she said, it was en­cour­ag­ing to know the sec­tor could quick­ly or­gan­ise to con­struc­tive­ly ad­dress in­dus­try fail­ings.

She al­so praised the TTP­BA's ef­forts to ho­n­our in­di­vid­u­als from var­i­ous arms of the me­dia whose ca­reers ex­em­pli­fied ex­cel­lence and who had played a sig­nif­i­cant role in shap­ing the lo­cal me­dia land­scape.

The late Patrick Chookolin­go, founder of the T&T Mir­ror, was ho­n­oured along with Mar­garet El­cock, CEO at Isaac 98.1FM and An­tho­ny Chow Lin On (Chi­nese Laun­dry) of T&T Ra­dio Net­work (96.1 WEFM, 107.7 and Star 94.7 HD) for con­tri­bu­tions to the de­vel­op­ment and ad­vance­ment of the in­dus­try.