PRESS FREEDOM UNDER THREAT IN JAMAICA

This is just an example why I said JLP will be their own downfall

Mind Your Freedoms: O Montague’s brief statement on separation from Newstalk93FM’s ‘Straight Up’
At the end of broadcast last Friday May 19th I was informed that my services were no longer needed as host of Straight Up on Newstalk 93fm due to financial and structural reasons. This development, though suspicious, was not entirely surprising. Over the two weeks leading up to my termination, Straight Up received repeated live phone calls from JLP surrogates, including a longstanding Andrew Holness Aide and the Prime Minister’s senior ‘Media Monitor’, Mr. Marlon Morgan. Morgan publicly informed me that Straight Up was one of the ‘most monitored programmes’, likely due to my daily call for integrity from the Holness Administration. Morgan’s actions can only be seen as a strategic move to control the programme’s narrative. This is interesting seeing Morgan generally has license to direct the content of the programme immediately preceding Straight Up several mornings per week.

Marlon’s action irritated many listeners and possibly advertisers, affecting funding and listenership. More importantly, his scandalous action was an attack on Jamaica’s proud tradition of maintaining a free press, and untimely in light of recent comments made in the senate by the Minister of Information. A regular caller to the programme even drew my attention to withdrawn Government advertising. These realities make the new station manager’s decision reasonable, but highlights a frightening new role for the Government’s media monitors. Through Morgan and others the JLP Administration seeks an ability to silence voices of dissent, even from within. And at the same time the Government’s Information Minister is building appetite for more regulation, with an unhealthy narrative poorly judging media discourse inside Jamaica’s free press environment.

I have no doubt that Straight Up’s running order would fail Minister Ried’s quality test for ‘media discourse’, triggering Spinning Morgan and the cavalry to ‘regulate, interfere and discredit’ through any means possibly. Even bringing my own public integrity into question by suggesting nefarious political reasons behind the frequent inclusion of the following issues on Straight Up’s agenda:

1. The crippling silence around calls for Danville Walker to resign from public boards after the recent rulings from our courts. I have asked whether secrets are being kept;

2. The harrowing silence around allegations made internationally by the Miami Herald about a JLP Member of Parliament’s potential ties to murder. I have asked whose secrets are being kept; and

3. A call for more activity from investigators to shatter the curious silence around the hunt for the killer of a fellow Jamaican at a popular Jamaican attorney’s home. I have asked if secrets are being kept.

Even though it does not currently form the Government, the PNP receives equal scrutiny whenever matters relating to them or their time in Government comes under national focus. The most recent was the curious land deal with China Harbour, which I took important lessons from. The media has a moral duty to bring information to the public’s attention before binding contracts are signed, and to keep the public informed about the spending of public funds and transfer of public assets.

Transparency is integral to democracy, and with the same intensity that I have asked to know more about China Harbour’s lands, I have also asked for more detailed explanations of:

1. the Government’s $800,000,000.00 JMD bushing expenses,
2. the likely partisan political allocation of over $3 Billion JMD on road works, and
3. recent revelations around Minister Samuda’s adventure with grass funded by the public.

On the people’s behalf the media also has a responsibility to hold an Administration to account for its commitments to the electorate. The promises to: introduce impeachment legislation, reduce crime, increase
the minimum wage, look after pensioners, and legislate for education to be a right and free to all students under 18 must be asked about, or we run the risk of enabling Governance by soundbites while nothing substantial is being done.

There are many (some would say too many) voices in the media cheerleading and contextualizing every action of the present Administration.

The substantial work of Government media monitors should be to enable quick response to people’s public complaints and speedy genuine replies to publicly vented concerns. Under Simpson-Miller’s Administration media monitors did not have reach to interfere with the media’s output, calling talk shows as private citizens would not be allowed on the Government’s time, nor would relationship building at chosen media houses. The Information Minister then understood that such an intrusion could amount to the State’s biased interference in
media affairs, or Government censorship.

This Administration’s new direction will overtime threaten the media’s responsibility to remain open, truthful and unbiased to all angles, even those critical of the Government. While it may be justified to ask tax payers to monitor the media in order to better understand the concerns of the people, asking them to pay for media interference and manipulation is to their own detriment. Worse, using public time to call radio stations to achieve a political end is corrupt and amounts to state funding of a political party through the back door. It is better to frontally address the pressing issues and concerns that remain a threat to the Government’s integrity instead of turning to public relations and attacks on the bearers of truth.

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Orrett Montague
Communication & Social Policy Consultant
Former Straight Up host as a Broadcast Journalist at Newstalk 93FM