Camillo condemns withdrawal of gov’t ads from party’s station

Former finance minister Camillo Gonsalves has joined the Leader of the Opposition, Ralph Gonsalves, in criticising the New Democratic Party (NDP) administration over the withdrawal of state advertising from Star Radio, which is owned by the opposition Unity Labour Party (ULP).

He noted that the opposition leader announced that the government had cut off state advertising from Star Radio, which began broadcasting in February 2008.

He said people’s reactions have fallen into two camps, with some saying the new government is right, noting the party’s ownership and accusing it of “always cussing the government”.

The other response, Gonsalves said, was that Star Radio does not have a large audience.

“‘Star radio is 5% of the listening public or whatever, they could more than cut it off. They could more than cut it off and you could reach them same people if you spend the money elsewhere.’”

Gonsalves noted his training in journalism, having completed an undergraduate degree in the United States.

He said he had pointed out to people that, when he was the minister in charge of the National Lotteries, Lotto advertising went to NICE Radio for sporting and cultural events.

NICE Radio, which is privately owned, is widely regarded as aligned with the NDP and has been broadcasting the party’s paid daily programme for more than two decades.

Gonsalves said that during his tenure as finance minister, the Carnival Development Corporation also advertised on NICE Radio and government agencies used to advertise on Hot 97, another privately-owned radio station, “which is every morning they get up and they criticise the government”.

He said he would tell people, “You can’t play that card,” to not advertise with radio stations critical of the ULP government.

“And they would say, ‘Well, that’s alyo stupidness, alyo should not do that, but it’s a new government, and if they decide they want to pay any of their critical radio stations, then that is up to them. That is a general position.

“Respectfully, those people are wrong, and this is a matter that goes to the plurality of media, the freedom of expression and the freedom of the press to be critical of the government,” said Gonsalves, who was voted out of office in November as MP for East St. George after two five-year terms.

“… this is whether or not a government can legally punish a dissenting voice by withholding advertising dollars from that voice in a context of a country like ours,” he said.

He said he was not going to “to make the argument using my words” and proceeded to read from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the principal organ of the   Organisation of American States, to promote and protect human rights in the Americas.

He said the OAS’s special rapporteur for freedom of expression says that the withholding of advertising revenue from media that is critical of the government is “an indirect violation of freedom of expression”.

The minister read the entire statement of the OAS on “INDIRECT VIOLATIONS OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: DISCRIMINATORY ALLOCATION OF OFFICIAL PUBLICITY”.

He also quoted from sections 124 and 125, the OAS’s “Freedom of Expression Standards for Free and Inclusive Broadcasting” which, he said, “lays it out, the exercise of power and the use of public funds by the state, the granting of customs duty privileges, the arbitrary and discriminatory placement of official advertising, government loans, so on and so forth.

“If they say Star is not as big as Hot 97, fine. You could establish that whether or not it’s true or not, I ain’t getting involved in that.”

He said that if Hot 97 FM controls 20% of the market and Star Radio 5%, “You can adjust the advertising rates accordingly.

“That’s what you do. You don’t cut off one to zero,” Gonsalves told Star Radio listeners.

“But if you cut it off to …arbitrarily, one time, no explanation, the logical conclusion is that is because it has a contrary political opinion to you, and that is not permissible. On Well, it’s permissible. They did it again, doing things that shouldn’t be done, but it is not a best practice. I’m being gentle with my language,” said Gonsalves, a former ambassador.

“NICE Radio has all right to criticise the government. Star FM has all right to criticise the government, and the monies that the government distributes through advertising should not in any way reflect who saying what about who.”

He said that in the digital age, “governments have to do more work”.

“Now, in this digital age, how much do you give to a TikTok site, a YouTube site? Are the media a blog? How long do you have to be established to be a newspaper or a blog, or whatever, worthy of receiving money?”

Gonsalves said the ULP government advertised in The News newspaper, “which never had a positive word to say about the previous administration.

“But there is a responsibility to use those monies in a way that is as equitable as possible, and cutting off the only one who is criticising you is not equitable,” he said.

The former finance minister said the government had done so at a time that it has “offered jobs to two other media people”, one of them being the founder of iWitness News, journalist Kenton Chance.

“And big up and congratulations to Kenton. I do not agree with a lot of Kenton’s philosophy and ideology and I haven’t read his writings in quite a while, but he is qualified to be the ambassador to Taiwan, and I wish him every success, and maybe the ambassador to China at a later date,” Gonsalves said, adding that this is “another conversation”.

He said the government’s actions have to be looked at “in the broader context”.

“The government has withdrawn funding to a critical radio station while giving a job to another major journalist and giving a board appointment to another owner of media,” Gonsalves said.

“So you have, in one fell swoop, rewarded entities that are complimentary of you and punished an entity that is critical of you, and that is not something that is allowable, again, in a mature, quote, unquote, civilised country.”

He said the government’s action cannot be justified by people saying that Donald Trump is doing the same in the United States, “when he starts to say, well, this talk show host need to come off the air, and this one need to lose the licence.

“But because Donald Trump is doing it in the United States, doesn’t make it right, and doesn’t mean that it is a sign of an action of a civilised country. Maybe quite the contrary. But we have to watch it. We have to watch it,” Gonsalves said.