Re­porters With­out Bor­ders (RSF), a glob­al press free­dom or­gan­i­sa­tion, is warn­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­de­pen­dent me­dia sec­tor is fac­ing grow­ing fi­nan­cial pres­sure, as gov­ern­ment ad­ver­tis­ing re­mains sus­pend­ed.

RSF said the freeze on ad­ver­tis­ing by Min­istries and State en­ter­pris­es, an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in May 2025 as part of a cost-cut­ting ex­er­cise, is plac­ing fur­ther strain on news or­gan­i­sa­tions.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion’s as­sess­ment was based in part on in­ter­views with Trinida­di­an jour­nal­ists and mem­bers of me­dia as­so­ci­a­tions, who raised con­cerns about the im­pact of shrink­ing news­room re­sources on in­ves­tiga­tive re­port­ing and me­dia ac­count­abil­i­ty.

RSF said the loss of a na­tion­al news­pa­per and the re­duc­tion of news­room staff at an­oth­er high­light the frag­ile state of in­de­pen­dent jour­nal­ism in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion warned that shrink­ing news­rooms could re­duce the abil­i­ty of jour­nal­ists to car­ry out in­ves­tiga­tive re­port­ing and hold pow­er­ful in­sti­tu­tions ac­count­able.

RSF ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor for North Amer­i­ca Clay­ton Weimers said in­de­pen­dent jour­nal­ism was al­ready un­der sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic strain.

“With­hold­ing a ma­jor source of ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enue will have con­se­quences that ex­tend far be­yond news­room bal­ance sheets,” Weimers said.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure any changes to State ad­ver­tis­ing are im­ple­ment­ed trans­par­ent­ly and in con­sul­ta­tion with me­dia stake­hold­ers.

Asked whether the Gov­ern­ment would re­con­sid­er the ad­ver­tis­ing freeze in light of con­cerns raised by Re­porters With­out Bor­ders and re­cent news­room cuts, Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not ad­dress the pol­i­cy’s im­pact on me­dia or­gan­i­sa­tions. In­stead, she crit­i­cised Guardian Me­dia’s lead­er­ship and ed­i­to­r­i­al prac­tices, ar­gu­ing that the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties stemmed from in­ter­nal man­age­ment de­ci­sions.

The warn­ing comes months af­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go fell 13 places in the 2026 World Press Free­dom In­dex com­piled by Re­porters With­out Bor­ders, drop­ping from 19th to 32nd out of 180 coun­tries.

While the coun­try re­mains among the Caribbean’s stronger per­form­ers on press free­dom, RSF iden­ti­fied eco­nom­ic pres­sures on news or­gan­i­sa­tions, the in­flu­ence of po­lit­i­cal ad­ver­tis­ing on ed­i­to­r­i­al in­de­pen­dence and on­line in­tim­i­da­tion of jour­nal­ists among the chal­lenges fac­ing the lo­cal me­dia land­scape.