Column by LENNOX GRANT reproduced from the Express Newspaper.
A chill up the spine. That's what any journalist is obliged to feel on seeing the reporting of a police "raid" on the Newsday Port of Spain newsroom.
On Friday, Express reportorial writing preferred "storm" over "raid" as the verb for the second execution of a search warrant at a newsroom in five weeks. Once again, the police were pursuing evidence for the prosecution, conducting a criminal investigation.
On Friday, Express reportorial writing preferred "storm" over "raid" as the verb for the second execution of a search warrant at a newsroom in five weeks. Once again, the police were pursuing evidence for the prosecution, conducting a criminal investigation.
The criminalising of media work thus sends a chill up the spine, an expression actually used by the New York Times executive editor in 2005 when a reporter was jailed for refusing to reveal her sources before a grand jury.
The December 2011 search of the TV6 newsroom provided occasion for my own unwitting role as a minor participant observer. Driving out of the Express House backyard car park, I was waved to a halt by a tall, plainclothes figure. He announced himself as an officer taking part in a search, asked my name and business, and bade me step out of the car.
The warrant that I demanded to see was three floors upstairs "with the superintendent", he said. If necessary, he suggested, I could wait until that officer came down. Meanwhile, would I open the trunk?
He hardly glanced at the contents of the trunk before letting me pass. But that flash experience of the TV6 shakedown left me, well, shaken, if not wildly stirred.
Can they do this? And who is "they", anyway? And what else is possible, under what power of right?
My own decades of media experience fall well short of his, but I noticed in Newsday's reporting of Thursday's raid/storm that associate editor John Babb also had relatively little to say, at least initially, when the shock troops descended upon Chacon Street.
Reflecting 65 years of a reporter's discipline, Mr Babb restricted himself to a matter-of-fact, non-editorialising, soundbite. "It is the first time I have witnessed this situation," he said.
He had been witness to the police poking around in his newsroom and, later, in the Belmont bedroom of reporter Andre Bagoo. Soon, all around, shields were clanging and press freedom alarms going off. But John Babb appeared to signal a reportorial mission undeviatingly on duty.
This may be what I want to read into a single sentence reported in the name of the indestructible hard-news consciousness represented by Mr Babb. Even this police trespass over barriers protecting press freedom, long thought inviolable, merits application of the professional technology of journalism.
Given the mood of these times, and the capacities objectively available, however, we may never factually fill in all the blanks for who, what, when, where, why etc…
In the US, media capacities are incomparably greater, and media people are better informed about why they do what they do. Moreover, it's where the public sphere is more thoroughly infused with understandings of relevant rights and of which ones prevail, when and why.
Does existing T&T legislation or case law uphold protection of journalists' sources and prohibit the hunting of evidence by storming or raiding newsrooms? We now know it should.
Newsday called it an "abuse of our rights", denouncing the senior superintendent and his search party as "Koon Koon and his gang". Well, have those rights been established in better than general terms and more than by the fact they were always thought to exist?
In the US, newsroom and bedroom raids in search of sources sought by prosecutors are equally unthinkable. But New York Times reporter Judith Miller spent 85 days in prison, before finally revealing a source as ordered by a special prosecutor.
"Anybody who believes that the government and other powerful institutions should be closely and aggressively watched should feel a chill up their spine," said Bill Keller, New York Times executive editor, on the day Ms Miller was jailed.
The Times also noted that "the case highlights a collision of the press's right to protect its sources (with) the government's ability to investigate a crime." Eventually, a protocol was invoked whereby the source released Ms Miller from the obligation of confidentiality, and she walked free.
The storming, the raiding, in Port of Spain look awful. But, evidently, in a system with more elaborate media protections than T&T's, the outcome could be worse: jail for the reporter.
Here, however, I sense the presence of the proverbial 200-pound gorilla in the room—in the institutional persona of the Director of Public Prosecutions. It is this overshadowing presence, wilfully overlooked by almost everyone that, in this reporter's mind, qualifies as the "Who" of the five Ws.
The DPP, now personally prosecuting CNC3 for contempt of court, occupies the office to which the Telecommunications Authority referred the TV6 Crime Watch case. This frightfully risk-averse DPP (who can still find no charge to press against Calder Hart) scorned police efforts to enforce the Anti-Gang Act by refusing to put before a jury a single one of some 400 gangsters fingered by detectives.
Storming, raiding TV6 and Newsday newsrooms represent the police going the extra mile, as demanded by or in anticipation of the DPP. The chilling thought is that the police, rather than being seen to be doing nothing, will do anything.
The December 2011 search of the TV6 newsroom provided occasion for my own unwitting role as a minor participant observer. Driving out of the Express House backyard car park, I was waved to a halt by a tall, plainclothes figure. He announced himself as an officer taking part in a search, asked my name and business, and bade me step out of the car.
The warrant that I demanded to see was three floors upstairs "with the superintendent", he said. If necessary, he suggested, I could wait until that officer came down. Meanwhile, would I open the trunk?
He hardly glanced at the contents of the trunk before letting me pass. But that flash experience of the TV6 shakedown left me, well, shaken, if not wildly stirred.
Can they do this? And who is "they", anyway? And what else is possible, under what power of right?
My own decades of media experience fall well short of his, but I noticed in Newsday's reporting of Thursday's raid/storm that associate editor John Babb also had relatively little to say, at least initially, when the shock troops descended upon Chacon Street.
Reflecting 65 years of a reporter's discipline, Mr Babb restricted himself to a matter-of-fact, non-editorialising, soundbite. "It is the first time I have witnessed this situation," he said.
He had been witness to the police poking around in his newsroom and, later, in the Belmont bedroom of reporter Andre Bagoo. Soon, all around, shields were clanging and press freedom alarms going off. But John Babb appeared to signal a reportorial mission undeviatingly on duty.
This may be what I want to read into a single sentence reported in the name of the indestructible hard-news consciousness represented by Mr Babb. Even this police trespass over barriers protecting press freedom, long thought inviolable, merits application of the professional technology of journalism.
Given the mood of these times, and the capacities objectively available, however, we may never factually fill in all the blanks for who, what, when, where, why etc…
In the US, media capacities are incomparably greater, and media people are better informed about why they do what they do. Moreover, it's where the public sphere is more thoroughly infused with understandings of relevant rights and of which ones prevail, when and why.
Does existing T&T legislation or case law uphold protection of journalists' sources and prohibit the hunting of evidence by storming or raiding newsrooms? We now know it should.
Newsday called it an "abuse of our rights", denouncing the senior superintendent and his search party as "Koon Koon and his gang". Well, have those rights been established in better than general terms and more than by the fact they were always thought to exist?
In the US, newsroom and bedroom raids in search of sources sought by prosecutors are equally unthinkable. But New York Times reporter Judith Miller spent 85 days in prison, before finally revealing a source as ordered by a special prosecutor.
"Anybody who believes that the government and other powerful institutions should be closely and aggressively watched should feel a chill up their spine," said Bill Keller, New York Times executive editor, on the day Ms Miller was jailed.
The Times also noted that "the case highlights a collision of the press's right to protect its sources (with) the government's ability to investigate a crime." Eventually, a protocol was invoked whereby the source released Ms Miller from the obligation of confidentiality, and she walked free.
The storming, the raiding, in Port of Spain look awful. But, evidently, in a system with more elaborate media protections than T&T's, the outcome could be worse: jail for the reporter.
Here, however, I sense the presence of the proverbial 200-pound gorilla in the room—in the institutional persona of the Director of Public Prosecutions. It is this overshadowing presence, wilfully overlooked by almost everyone that, in this reporter's mind, qualifies as the "Who" of the five Ws.
The DPP, now personally prosecuting CNC3 for contempt of court, occupies the office to which the Telecommunications Authority referred the TV6 Crime Watch case. This frightfully risk-averse DPP (who can still find no charge to press against Calder Hart) scorned police efforts to enforce the Anti-Gang Act by refusing to put before a jury a single one of some 400 gangsters fingered by detectives.
Storming, raiding TV6 and Newsday newsrooms represent the police going the extra mile, as demanded by or in anticipation of the DPP. The chilling thought is that the police, rather than being seen to be doing nothing, will do anything.
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