“We want to re­as­sure all mem­bers of the (me­dia) fra­ter­ni­ty, those who are mem­bers of the or­gan­i­sa­tion for­mal­ly and those who are watch­ers, sup­port­ers and even crit­ics of the or­gan­i­sa­tion that we in­tend to ap­proach our task with in­tegri­ty and a lot of dili­gence”.

So said new­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent of the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MATT) Dr Sheila Ram­per­sad fol­low­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s elec­tions at TSTT’s suite at the Queen’s Park Oval yes­ter­day.

Elec­tions were al­so held at Bmo­bile’s Con­fer­ence Room at Gulf City Mall, Low­lands in To­ba­go.

Join­ing Ram­per­sad on the new MATT ex­ec­u­tive are vice pres­i­dent Lasana Liburd, trea­sur­er Vin­d­har Suraj, sec­re­tary Francesca Hawkins, as­sis­tant sec­re­tary Marie Hull and floor mem­bers Akash Sama­roo and Jensen La Vende.

Ram­per­sad said high on her agen­da for MATT are re­form of the as­so­ci­a­tion’s con­sti­tu­tion, as well as deal­ing with the Cy­ber­crime Bill, Whistle­blow­er leg­is­la­tion and the Non-Prof­it Or­gan­i­sa­tion’s Bill.

With re­spect to the cur­rent war against the me­dia by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith, Ram­per­sad said the as­so­ci­a­tion will con­tin­ue mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

She said MATT will con­tin­ue to de­fend press free­dom and free­dom of ex­pres­sion for all.

“The Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion es­sen­tial­ly is about the pro­tec­tion of press free­dom and ad­vo­ca­cy for free­dom of ex­pres­sion more gen­er­al­ly un­der which free­dom of the press comes so that free­dom of ex­pres­sion for all peo­ple, for all sec­tors, for all in­di­vid­u­als, for all or­gan­i­sa­tions, re­main an im­por­tant fo­cus for MATT and we will con­tin­ue to guard it in what­ev­er way we feel is nec­es­sary,” she said.