Mr Chairman, Honourable Prime Minister, Ministers, Distinguished Participants, Ladies and Gentlemen.
There can be no question that a great void now exists in the flow of information in the Caribbean.
Throughout the Region, newspapers and radio and television stations are devoid of news and information about events in the Caribbean.
Even the largest of the media entities – those that claim to serve an area wider than the limitations of their national boundaries – have very little information about events outside their national confines.
However, inadequate and sometimes unprofessional was the coverage provided over the past twenty-six years by CANA and more recently by CMC – its merged operation with the CBU – there is no gainsaying the fact that the region has sorely missed it in the last three weeks.
It was always the case that however profitable a few individual media houses might be in some countries of the Caribbean, they were never wealthy enough to provide coverage of the region as a whole.
Their national advertisers and subscribers – even in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, our largest population centres – could not sustain the cost of regional news coverage. Each of our countries is too small for even the most profitable media houses in our individual states to contemplate a region-wide service.
This is why the creation of the Caribbean News Agency (CANA) and the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) were so important to our region. Each of them provided a corporate vehicle for regional coverage that national entities were too small to sustain.
As it now turns out, even the regional approach of CANA and the CBU, and then CMC, fell victim to the small size of our market.
The so-called “magic of the marketplace” proved to be illusory.
This is not to say that all of CMC’s problems were a result of a small market. I note that the management of the Organisation is also now saying that the events of September 11th and their aftermath affected their business. Some of that might be true. But, it cannot be the whole story. Many of the significant debts of CMC and its predecessor organisations were incurred before September 11th.
Mr Chairman, there are some fundamental issues relating to the structure of the Organisation and its decision-making process that have to be addressed. For example, one of the matters that should be examined is: how appropriate is it that the rates for CMC’s services should be set by persons who represent the media houses that purchase those services? Where would the greater loyalty lie? Would it be with the viability of CMC or with the profitability of the national entity who that person represents?
These are issues that I have no doubt you will consider today in the attempt to ensure that the sad void which now exists so glaringly in the flow of information in our region does not long continue.
Mr Chairman, I took the initiative to propose this meeting of Ministers of Information, or of representatives of Heads of Government, because I know that information is a vital tool both in the development and integration of the region.
Without a free flow of information that is objectively and fairly gathered and widely distributed, both the integration project upon which we have been embarked in the region since 1968, and the single market and economy that we are now trying to bring to fruition, would flounder.
A single economic space in our region requires the support of our populations, and our business people need access to information upon which to base crucial judgements. That information is not always financial. More often, it is economic, social and political.
CANA, the CBU and then CMC provided the fundamental inter-communication -however imperfectly – that our region needs to help achieve both the coherence and the cohesiveness that is basic to the creation of a community of interests.
Confidence and trust are essential ingredients in the building of community. And, since the less your neighbour knows of you, the more of a stranger you become, it logically follows that confidence and trust cannot be developed in the absence of a regular and sustained flow of information.
The less informed in our region were quick to say that the reason why governments have an interest in rehabilitating CMC is because we wish to control it, and to dictate its news coverage to suit ourselves.
Remarkably, this view was not limited only to the poorly informed, it surfaced even among some of CMC’s decision-makers who are now looking to governments to help bail them out of their present financial crisis by the provision of grants or loans totalling US$2 million.
It appears, therefore, that the view exists that governments should always foot the bill for the failures of private enterprise, but they should have no say in the management and policy of the institutions. This is a ridiculous argument.
You will no doubt debate this issue today. Suffice for me to say, at this time, that I know of no government that wishes to own and control the regional corporate vehicles of information in the Caribbean. My government certainly does not.
I am sure that all the governments of the Caribbean Community are quite content that the corporate vehicles of information be owned and managed by people with the independence, objectivity and expertise to do so. However, governments should at the very least expect that those corporate vehicles are professionally run in a manner that does not serve the interests of its shareholders alone, but also tends to the needs of the Caribbean people for objective information gathered without bias and distributed in a cost effective way.
In any event, perhaps we need to remind those who make glib statements about the motives behind the interest of governments in the corporate vehicles of information in the region, that both the CBU and CANA originated not at the enterprise of the private sector, but at the initiative of governments.
And, in initiating the CBU and CANA, governments sought no part in their ownership and control.
Heads of Government of what was then CARIFTA, the predecessor of CARICOM, at their Fourth Conference held in Barbados in October 1967 unanimously adopted the following Resolution:
“Conscious that regional thinking and awareness is the essential basis for the effective working of regional institutions; aware that the mass media play a dominant role in the shaping of the public mind; noting that the mass media at present provided inadequate coverage for regional events and policies;
Heads of Government agree that:
An early survey be made to determine the requirements for meeting the present deficiencies including:
(a) The establishment of a regional news agency; and
(b) The regular exchange of sound radio and television programme material including educational programmes by territorial broadcasting organisations.”
It is significant that a survey of the Caribbean press compiled in 1967 revealed that during the period of the analysis, “there were no feature articles on Caribbean topics in any section of the press” and that “none of the papers carried a single news photograph which originated from another Caribbean territory”. A similar situation existed in the field of news broadcasting.
It is equally significant that the majority of the media houses at the time were owned by private companies and not the State. I make this point only to emphasise that while I do not advocate a role for governments in the ownership and control of regional corporate vehicles for the dissemination of information, it was governments not the private sector that had the vision to promote the creation of these corporate vehicles.
In any event, it was from that Resolution that UNESCO was asked to carry out a survey which set the framework for the establishment first of the CBU and then CANA. The UNESCO report, authored in 1968 by Guy M Roppa and Neville E Clarke also proposed the creation of what is now the Caribbean Institute of Mass Communications at the University of the West Indies.
The CBU was established informally in 1969 and Article 2 of its Charter stated its objectives as:
“To encourage through broadcasting the fuller involvement of the peoples of the region in their common aspiration”, and “to encourage the exchange of regional news and programming between member stations and to coordinate such exchange”.
CANA took somewhat longer to be established. The print media, dominated by privately owned companies, were in no hurry to act on the Resolution of Governments or the recommendations of the 1968 UNESCO report.
What caused them to act was almost the same circumstances that has caused them to close CMC now.
Reuters news agency had been providing a limited news service to subscribers in the Caribbean from London. We had the remarkable situation in which news from Montserrat, which is 30 miles away from Antigua, came here via London. And, this situation was true for the movement of information for all Caribbean countries: the movement was always through London. In 1968, Reuters did move its Caribbean desk to Barbados, but its coverage of events remained limited and inadequate.
Even the US President at the time, Lyndon Johnson, recognised the inadequacy of this system. He remarked:
“The present system of communications encourages indirect routing through major nations to the developing countries, forces the developing nations to remain dependent on larger countries for their links with the rest of the world, and makes international communications service to these developing nations more expensive and of a lower quality”.
Of course, nothing much has changed in international communications. Thirty years later, communications between developing countries are still rooted through what President Johnson called “major nations”. But, at least within the Caribbean, the work of CBU, CANA and then CMC had corrected the flow of direct information between our territories.
In any event, in 1971 Reuters announced its intention to increase significantly the cost of regional and international news service. This caused the media houses to begin discussion in 1972 on the establishment of CANA and they did so three years later.
Ironically, part of the reason for CMC’s financial difficulties is being linked by the management to the termination by Reuters International News service of its partnership arrangement with CMC and the subsequent loss of revenue.
Mr Chairman, CMC’s closure has made several things obvious. These are:
First, the advertising and subscriber base in the entire CARICOM region is too small to sustain the multiplicity of media that now exists in the region as well as regional corporate news vehicles. As a region, we have to come to grips with the reality of our small market size. If we continue to rely solely on the “magic of the market” to deliver the information flow our region requires, we will be forced to tolerate not only inadequate coverage but poor quality coverage too.
Clearly there is a need for funds to be provided to the regional corporate vehicles from the public and private sector that go beyond advertising and subscriptions. Whether, in future, the corporate vehicles are CANA and the CBU as separate entities, or the merged CMC, or some other creation, they will not survive by reliance on our small market alone.
In this connection, both governments and the private sector have to consider contributing to the capitalization of the corporate vehicles in ways that will make them viable. But speaking for my own government I would think that a precondition for government investment in a restructured CMC would be the requirement of both a financial and management audit into the operations of CBU, CANA and CMC. I am sure that we can vigorously pursue the capitalization of a new structure even while these audits are proceeding. My government remains convinced that our region needs an indigenous regional news and information corporate vehicle such as CMC.
Capitalisation should come from three sources: the media houses who own the corporate vehicles, the private sector of the region other than the media houses, and governments.
I hope you will explore this possibility during your deliberations.
The second thing that is obvious from CMC’s closure is that the corporate decision-making structure cannot be restricted to the representatives of the media houses who own the regional corporate vehicle. There is an obvious conflict of interest on the matter of whose interests are being served. Is it the interest of the regional corporate vehicle or the national media house, which buys the services? Since the representatives on CMC’s Board have a foot in both camps, can they be expected to serve either or both without conflict?
Mr Chairman, assistance to any recapitalized CMC, or new corporate structure, should not be seen simply as a financial bailout. It must result in an improvement in news coverage, in the coverage of regional events and in the quality of the management and staff of the institution, notwithstanding the known capability of several individuals.
I was pleased to receive a letter last Friday from Mr George De Peana, the General Secretary of the Caribbean Congress of Labour, expressing support for my initiative to hold this meeting. He expressed the CCL’s anxiety to see a regional information vehicle back in place in the interest of the region. But, he was especially concerned about the 50 of the 54 employees of CMC who were suddenly laid off on 4th January and who are now awaiting some information about their future prospects. They have been laid off with no severance pay and a promise that the Organisation is restructuring and will reopen at an unspecified time. This is not a satisfactory situation.
Had it been Governments that had taken such action, they would have been heavily criticised by the very media houses that have now done it. The position of the workers must be addressed promptly. I join Mr De Peana in expressing concern about the plight of the workers, many of who have served the organisations for a long time. Their situation must be an immediate priority of any financial arrangements made with CMC.
Mr Chairman, while I do not want to see either governments or the private sector, who are not media houses, owning and operating the regional corporate vehicle, I do believe that two mechanisms would have to be established to justify the provision of financial resources by the government and the rest of the private sector.
Those two mechanisms would be as follows:
An oversight committee, which would oversee the financial operations and management structure of the regional entity. Such an oversight committee might draw its membership from the Caribbean Development Bank, the Caribbean Association of Industry and Commerce, and the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank.
The other mechanism should be one concerned with journalistic standards and quality. It should have the power both to initiate inquiries into the performance of the entity and to receive and investigate complaints about the quality of its service. Its representatives should be drawn from amongst persons such as retired senior editors and journalists and others with a known track record in arbitration.
Mr Chairman, the Antigua and Barbuda delegation will expand on these proposals in the course of the meeting.
The third thing that is obvious from CMC’s closure is the compelling need for a corporate vehicle that provides public-service-oriented news to the region.
Today, the Caribbean is bombarded with television images from huge media empires in what Lyndon Johnson called “the major nations”. Increasingly, they are interpreting world events for our people. This is a dangerous situation for often the interpretations of events, as expounded by these media, conflict with the national or collective interest of our region.
The information provided to the Caribbean about the Caribbean by the CBU, CANA and then CMC was an oasis in a desert of foreign dominated news. The loss of that information, with all its imperfections, weakens our attempt to reinforce our own culture and maintain our Caribbean identity. We are poorer as a people for CMC’s closure.
And, as I told my colleague Heads of Government when I wrote to them proposing this Meeting:
“As we are moving toward the solidifying of the Single Market and Economy in CARICOM, it is unsatisfactory that the region should lose the means of informing each member state about developments in the other. The SME would suffer considerably from this loss”.
Successive expert groups, established by Heads of Government over the last 20 years, have emphasised the centrality of communication to the sustenance of the spirit of community in the Caribbean.
As governments took the lead in Barbados in 1967 to establish the CBU, CANA and Institute of Mass Communications at UWI, so must we, at this meeting, resolve that we maintain and sustain the corporate vehicles of information in our region.
In 1967 the Heads were motivated by what their Resolution said was their consciousness “that regional thinking and awareness is the essential basis for effective working of regional institutions” and that “the mass media at present provided inadequate coverage for regional events and policies”.
We must not revert to that state of affairs.
We must continue the work so bravely begun in 1967 and put in place the machinery for ensuring that communication in our Caribbean community is sustained.
I call on you to do so.
Thank you, Mr Chairman.
