Commentary: State-owned media does not mean state control

From the website of state-owned CNMG in Trinidad

I have read with interest comments reported in the Trinidad & Tobago media attributed to Julio Munoz, executive director or the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) in which Munoz is quoted as saying "State-owned media means misinformation to the public."

The Trinidad Express reported Munoz as making the point during a panel discussion on "The State of State Media" on the second day of the International Press Institute's (IPI) 60th annual World Congress in Port of Spain.

Munoz openly criticised any attempt by state media around the world to influence journalists, the Express reported. It added that Muonz stated that governments control the press content through the revocation of licences as is the case in Venezuela or by advertising only in media houses deemed to be pro-government.

"The real information is what belongs to the public. When people go to buy a newspaper they always have a choice. But they will pick up the one with the highest credibility," the paper quoted Munoz as saying. The media executive is also reported to have said journalists working in state-owned media must be "loyal to government" and therefore the full picture is never given.

Hungarian journalist Attila Mong is quoted as saying that in his country "Public media is being occupied and turned into a propaganda machine."

The lone voice in defence of state media was the principal correspondent the Doodarshan News in India, Poonam Dabas, who said that she has never been pressured by any government official to censure her broadcast, the Express said.

The paper noted that Dabas stated that many times "the calls for censorship come not from the ministers, but from "over enthusiastic" public servants seeking to please their ministers.

"She argued that state media is necessary to distribute the messages of social importance that private media may be reluctant to broadcast or publish. She also said that private media focused mainly on broadcasting in cities and only the state owned media invested the resources to broadcast throughout the country in the mountainous and the rural areas," the Express reported.

I have been a strong advocate of state media for decades, having started my career in Trinidad at the only television station in the country, Trinidad & Tobago Television (ttt). My argument has always been that in emerging societies such as ours it is critically important to have state-owned media to offer plurality in news and views and to give access to the voiceless.

Media organisations are expensive to own and operate and when left in the hands of the private sector exclusively there is always the danger that objectivity could be sacrificed in order to satisfy the agenda of the owners/publishers. The real debate about state media should be whether the state should own and control or just own.

I have worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Canada for more than two decades and I can say without fear of contradiction that this state-owned media organisation is deeply respected in Canada and the world for its reporting of Canadian and world affairs without fear of favour.

The CBC is owned by the state with a clear mandate on its role in Canadian society. The private media in Canada do not have a similar responsibility and had it been left to them, Canada would have been robbed of a vital communication vehicle to connect its various regions.

I was a CBC senior editor for nearly 10 years, operating independently without any form of influence in doing my job. I edited thousands of newscasts, selected the stories to be covered, briefed writers, worked with producers and correspondents all over the planet without the slightest worry that we had to be doing the bidding of someone in Ottawa or that some official was watching us to make sure we followed instructions. We were free and independent and CBC remains so.

CBC recruited journalists and other personnel for their competence not their political affiliation, even when governments changed. CBC is an example of what state-owned media should be and why the state should own media. The BBC is a similar example of state-owned media.

I would agree that there is always a danger that state-owned could become state-controlled and that is why governments must guard against that possibility. I have read reports from Latin America where a form of censorship operates on the basis of penalising media companies that are not 'friendly' to sitting governments. And that includes the private media.

Governments control millions of dollars in advertising and can use their clout to bring businesses in line, as they have done in some states. So they get control of the media without owning them. In other instances newspapers have suffered because of artificial shortages of newsprint or exorbitant tariffs on importing equipment, including vital newsprint.

In the case of Trinidad & Tobago I had always been free to work as a reporter although there were many attempts to kill certain stories or to ask me to look the other way. I always fought such attempts by pointing to the constitution of Trinidad & Tobago that guarantees freedom of the media as a fundamental right. And that is what every journalist in the state-owned media can do and must do if she or he feels threatened. 

The present administration has made it clear that it will defend media freedom at all costs and so far there is no convincing argument that the state controls media content at its radio and television stations. 

The inherent danger is in the structure of the board of directors who are all appointed by the state. So while the politicians may not be interfering you might find instances such as the ones mentioned by the Doordarshan correspondent where over zealous bureaucrats poke their noses in the business of the state media. And there is also the danger of self censorship by political appointees, which was common during previous administrations.

If you look at the ownership structure of private media in the United States, for example, you will see a formula for a particular style of journalism based on the who owns and whose agenda is important. FOX is a prime example of what happens in private media.

There is indeed a danger that governments can control media to the detriment of society but the same argument is true about private media. The real issue is how the state sets up the media apparatus to govern the operation of all media.

Again, Canada is a prime example of how this is to be done. One needs only to look at the work of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to understand how state media operate in the interest of the state and civil society.

In societies such as Trinidad & Tobago it is important for the state to OWN and it is equally important for the state to establish a mechanism to guarantee that there is no direct interference in news and current affairs. However the state should insist that the media it owns - the people's media - exercise a sense of social responsibility to the nation-state to develop programming that reflects the society and builds and enriches the society.

No one can expect the private media to do that because they have to answer to their shareholders who do not necessarily share the same concerns as a government.

I disagree with the notion that state-owned means state-controlled. We need to be more careful in generalisations.

Jai Parasram | Toronto, 25 June 2012