On May 3, jour­nal­ists com­mem­o­rat­ed World Press Free­dom Day. It could have been par­tic­u­lar­ly cel­e­bra­to­ry for lo­cal jour­nal­ists since we moved up 11 places from 2020 and now rank 25th out of 190 coun­tries–one place be­low the UK, high­er than sev­er­al Eu­ro­pean coun­tries, and high­er than Aus­tralia.  

How­ev­er, ela­tion soured when it was point­ed out that, in fact, our free­dom in­dex re­flect­ed more of a sharp drop in free­doms in oth­er coun­tries, than ad­vances in ours.

Ac­cord­ing to its web­site, the World Press Free­dom In­dex “Re­porters sans Fron­tières” com­pares jour­nal­ists’ lev­el of free­dom in 180 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries.

This com­par­i­son is based on a de­f­i­n­i­tion of press free­dom for­mu­lat­ed by RSF and com­piled based on re­spons­es from press free­dom spe­cial­ists in 180 coun­tries. Press free­dom in­di­ca­tors in­clude po­lit­i­cal con­text, le­gal frame­work, eco­nom­ic con­text, so­cio­cul­tur­al con­text and safe­ty.

This is what RSF had to say about Trinidad, with a score of 78.68.

Me­dia land­scape: “In T&T par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy with a vi­brant me­dia land­scape and civ­il so­ci­ety, free­dom of the press is a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly guar­an­teed and wide­ly re­spect­ed right. Me­dia plu­ral­ism is strong, with mul­ti­ple me­dia out­lets ex­press­ing many view­points, the main ones be­ing the Trinidad Guardian, the old­est news­pa­per in the coun­try cre­at­ed in 1917, and the Trinidad & To­ba­go Ex­press, al­so known as the Dai­ly Ex­press.”

Po­lit­i­cal con­text: “There are nu­mer­ous po­lit­i­cal par­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and pow­er trans­fers oc­cur peace­ful­ly. Po­lit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion is not sub­ject to ex­ter­nal pres­sure, though women are gen­er­al­ly un­der­rep­re­sent­ed in po­lit­i­cal po­si­tions.”

Le­gal frame­work: “Mea­sures aim­ing to guar­an­tee re­spect for jour­nal­ists’ rights were bol­stered in ear­ly 2021 thanks to a Supreme Court rul­ing that struck down the use of po­lice search war­rants to ac­cess the home and of­fice of a jour­nal­ist work­ing for the Trinidad Ex­press News­pa­per.

The Caribbean Broad­cast­ing Union (CBU) wel­comed the de­ci­sion, and de­ter­mined that the war­rants used to seize “tools of the jour­nal­ist’s trade” were “un­law­ful and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.”

Safe­ty Record: “With ze­ro jour­nal­ists im­pris­oned, killed or miss­ing in 2021 Trinidad and To­ba­go pro­vides a gen­er­al­ly safe and pro­tect­ed en­vi­ron­ment for the pro­fes­sion.”

Com­pla­cen­cy is like a grenade to free­dom of speech, and now more than ever, we would be fool­ish not to recog­nise that we are in­ter­con­nect­ed glob­al­ly, and press free­dom is in de­cline glob­al­ly.

The Econ­o­mist last week sound­ed a warn­ing against Pe­ga­sus spy­ware—as did the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (MATT) on May 3—ac­knowl­edg­ing that so­cial me­dia is used to “ha­rass re­porters”; that fe­male jour­nal­ists “con­tin­ue to en­dure on­line abuse; that dozens of re­porters are jailed and killed each year.

The mag­a­zine de­clared that “press free­dom is in de­cline, as ham­strung as was in 1984 dur­ing the Cold War,” with 85 per cent of peo­ple to­day liv­ing in regimes where press free­dom is con­strained.

Ac­cord­ing to The Econ­o­mist, In­dia is just one ex­am­ple: “This is scari­est when it is or­gan­ised and has the tac­it back­ing of the rul­ing par­ty. In In­dia, for ex­am­ple, crit­ics of the prime min­is­ter, Naren­dra Mo­di, face tor­rents of death and rape threats from Hin­du na­tion­al­ist trolls, who some­times pub­lish their ad­dress­es and in­cite vig­i­lantes to vis­it them.”

T&T’s rank­ings have mer­it main­ly be­cause our jour­nal­ists have re­mained vig­i­lant, push­ing back at threats to press free­dom, stren­u­ous­ly guard­ing our rights and hold­ing politi­cians to ac­count.

To give our politi­cians cred­it, they have by and large, since in­de­pen­dence, re­spect­ed the in­sti­tu­tion of the Fourth Es­tate, pri­mar­i­ly when they are held to ac­count.

Still, it’s not busi­ness as usu­al. T&T’s place points are up in Re­porters With­out Bor­ders and not our per­cent­age rank­ings.

We have done well to ped­al fast to stay at the same per­cent­age point of “sat­is­fac­to­ry.” In or­der not to fall back, our fra­ter­ni­ty needs to re­main vig­i­lant, be­come a tighter unit here at home, and en­gage hard­er both re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in cross bor­der col­lab­o­ra­tions (men­tioned by the Econ­o­mist) such as those that have ex­posed scan­dals in­clud­ing Pe­ga­sus and the Pana­ma Pa­pers.

We know the brief: a strong press means a strong watch­dog over all in­sti­tu­tions of democ­ra­cy, and the me­dia in T&T have made it clear that is not ne­go­tiable.

If we must ped­al hard­er to stay in the same place, we will.