The In­ter­na­tion­al Press In­sti­tute (IPI) has chas­tised Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Ja­mal Mo­hammed for an e-mail he sent to a lo­cal tele­vi­sion sta­tion head, de­scrib­ing it as "high­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate." He sent the e-mail last week Tues­day ac­cus­ing Do­minic Kaliper­sad, head of News at CCN TV6, and the Ex­press news­pa­per of be­ing prej­u­diced against the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment.

He al­so claimed the two me­dia hous­es, part of the One Caribbean Me­dia, "have em­barked on a sad jour­ney to dis­cred­it and de­stroy." In the let­ter, Mo­hammed out­lined what he de­scribed as "a de­ter­mined ef­fort to em­bar­rass gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials in the name of in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism" and charged CCN TV 6 and the Ex­press were seek­ing the fall of Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ad­min­is­tra­tion.

But in a re­ac­tion, IPI ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Al­i­son Bethel McKen­zie said on Mon­day: "For the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter to en­gage in this kind of di­rect in­tim­i­da­tion of the me­dia is high­ly trou­bling and, un­for­tu­nate­ly, in­dica­tive of a re­cent pat­tern of abuse by Trinida­di­an Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials against the press.

"The me­dia do not ex­ist to do the bid­ding of gov­ern­ments but rather to serve the cit­i­zens of a giv­en coun­try by pro­vid­ing fair and ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion about mat­ters of pub­lic in­ter­est." She added: "More­over, in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic state, such as T&T, news­pa­pers and broad­cast­ers have the right to ex­press their po­lit­i­cal opin­ions and re­port on the is­sues they-not those in pow­er-deem as news­wor­thy."

The IPI head added: "We hope that in the fu­ture Mr Mo­hammed will turn his at­ten­tion to re­peal­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go's crim­i­nal defama­tion laws." Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Mo­hammed said he in­tend­ed to meet with the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T and the Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion next week to ad­dress con­cerns over re­cent me­dia state­ments.

He said he was pre­pared to meet with the me­dia bod­ies this week but some of their mem­bers were un­avail­able. He said he was con­fi­dent af­ter next Tues­day's meet­ing the trou­bling is­sues would be re­solved in a spir­it of com­pro­mise.

He in­sist­ed the Gov­ern­ment re­mained com­mit­ted to the main­te­nance of press free­dom.

Ear­li­er this month Mo­hammed spoke of a plan to re­quest all pri­vate ra­dio and tele­vi­sion sta­tions to car­ry up to one hour of gov­ern­ment pro­gram­ming dai­ly. The IPI not­ed that al­though a 2005 con­ces­sion agree­ment for all broad­cast­ers con­tained a clause for gov­ern­ment pro­grammes, the ad­min­is­tra­tion had nev­er en­forced it.

The IPI said it al­so re­cent­ly de­nounced a pub­lic cam­paign led in part by high-rank­ing gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials to dis­cred­it two promi­nent in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists, one of whom, Denyse Renne of the T&T Guardian, had bro­ken a sto­ry about a ma­jor leg­isla­tive scan­dal over Sec­tion 34.

The IPI?said dur­ing its World Con­gress in Port-of-Spain in June, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had an­nounced her com­mit­ment to press free­dom and her in­ten­tion to de­crim­i­nalise the coun­try's defama­tion laws.