(Kaieteur News) – There are times when professional rivalry becomes a luxury and solidarity becomes a duty. Washington has just provided one.
The Trump administration has barred CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, accusing them of publishing what President Donald Trump calls “fake news.” The three organisations have challenged the decision in court, arguing that their exclusion violates their constitutional rights.
The White House television pool is an arrangement among the major U.S. television networks under which one network at a time is designated to provide the television coverage of presidential events that cannot accommodate all broadcasters. The network assigned to the pool supplies the live video and audio feed, which is then made available to the other networks and broadcasters, allowing the public to see and hear the president even when physical space is limited. The participating networks — ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News and CNN — rotate this responsibility
CNN was scheduled to perform its turn in the White House television pool. The other members of that pool — ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News — could simply have stepped into the breach. They did not. Instead, they collectively refused to replace CNN.
The decision meant that the presidential television pool was suspended for events that CNN had been scheduled to cover. The networks declared that the public has a vital interest in receiving accurate and independent information about its government and that no administration should restrict a news organisation because it objects to its reporting. Even Fox News, which is perceived in some quarters as being pro-Trump, stood with the other networks.
That is what solidarity looks like. The American networks were effectively defending a principle. They were also saying that today it is CNN; tomorrow it could be us.
The White House’s aversion to criticism is well known. Reporters have been publicly berated, dismissed and personally attacked during presidential encounters, part of a broader and well-documented antagonism between the president and sections of the press.
The answer from the American networks has decisive. The networks have signalled clearly that they will not be part of any scheme to help replace those who the White House has excluded.
Guyana should pay attention. We have no shortage of experience with the political abuse of journalists. The Guyana Press Association has documented complaints of harassment, aggression, intimidation, verbal attacks, preferential access for favoured media and the sidelining of organisations regarded as unfriendly. It has specifically recorded incidents involving journalists being berated or insulted by politicians and concerns about attempts to create self-censorship within the profession.
Journalists have been shouted at. They have been insulted. They have had their questions attacked rather than answered. Media houses have complained about selective access. The GPA has even warned of “creeping information control” and criticised what it called “pseudo press conferences” in which questioning is choreographed and follow-ups restricted.
The sad reality however is that the Guyanese media has sometimes permitted itself to be divided by the very political forces whose conduct it ought to scrutinise.
This column has repeatedly criticised the treatment of journalists at political press conferences and questioned why the media should allow itself to become the captive audience of partisan propaganda. It argued that in the recent past, sections of the press had become willing participants in weekly gatherings at Freedom House where matters of government were discussed by the governing party, effectively blurring the distinction between party and State.
If government business is being discussed at a party headquarters, the media has a right to report it. But the media should also ask itself whether, by repeatedly treating partisan briefings as substitutes for official government press conferences, it is allowing politicians to determine the means through which government is questioned.
Guyana’s media houses need to discover the courage of collective self-interest. They need not like one another. They need not endorse one another’s editorial positions. But there should be certain lines that no respectable press corps permits the political establishment to cross.
An insult to one journalist is an insult to the profession. Exclusion of one media house is a warning to all media houses. Intimidation of one reporter is an invitation to intimidate another.
Guyana’s media must learn that when one journalist is demeaned, the entire profession is diminished. If at a press conference, a reporter is publicly insulted, humiliated or bullied for asking a legitimate question, the other journalists present should not sit silently, take notes and wait their turn. They should put down their notebooks, switch off their recorders and cameras and walk out together.
No government official should be allowed to abuse one journalist while the rest remain in their seats hoping to get the next question. The message should be unmistakable: insult one of us, and you have lost all of us. That is professional solidarity. And sometimes the most powerful question a press corps can ask is the question it collectively refuses to hear.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
Source: Kaieteur News
