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<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SPAN class=TopStory>Wha sweet Nanny Goat</SPAN>
<SPAN class=Subheadline>Common Sense</SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>John Maxwell
Sunday, February 11, 2007
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<P class=StoryText align=justify>Paradoxically, journalists in the western world tend to have less freedom of expression than most of their fellow citizens. Their freedom is often circumscribed by their employment.<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=157 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>John Maxwell</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>In Jamaica, their freedom is further restricted by the presence in the media of people masquerading as journalists whose main qualification appears to be an inability to keep their mouths shut, especially when the subject is as exotic and arcane as politics and the environment.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Most of them do not understand the first thing about human rights in general and freedom of the press in particular. Even some real journalists appear not to have informed themselves on the subject as completely as they
ought, despite decades of journalistic experience.<P class=StoryText align=justify>And relative newcomers such as the cartoonist Las May really owe it to themselves to find out what it really means, his pitiful cartoons on the subject notwithstanding. His most egregious: picturing himself as an icon for freedom of the press, having been stabbed in the back by Desmond Richards, president of the Press Association. If he regards that as a stab in the back, this column to him must count as the attempted assassination of press freedom.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Freedom of the press does not belong to the press, as many imagine. Freedom of the press is a human right derived from the freedom of expression guaranteed supposedly in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and documents such as the Jamaican and Trinidad Constitution. Freedom of the press, being a human right, cannot belong to corporations.<P class=StoryText align=justify>As I said in my fourth column for this newspaper, in April 1996: "Of all the people in the English speaking world, editors have the least real freedom, the most restricted human rights. In France, and many European countries, editors and editorial boards really do run their papers, and the proprietors behave as they do in any other business, leaving the management to the managers. Their relations are governed by 'statutes' which define policy and mark out territory for both sides."<P class=StoryText align=justify>Those remarks were provoked by a controversy in Trinidad, where freedom of the press is supposedly guaranteed in the constitution. That did not prevent<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=140 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>CHAPLIN. unfortunately, the code of ethics is not widely adhered to and very few journalists, especially the younger ones, are aware of the provisions </SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>Mr Anthony Sagba, the head honcho of McAl Alston, the Trinidad Guardian's parent company, telling his editorial employees some years ago to shut up and mind their business. Mr Sagba refused to allow his journalists to question the behaviour of the conglomerate which owned the paper and its dealings with the government.<P class=StoryText align=justify>In graphic language, Mr Sagba was reported to have said that in addition to employing journalists he sold things like razor blades in his supermarkets and he wasn't about to let his
Journalists damage him any mor
<SPAN class=Subheadline>Common Sense</SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>John Maxwell
Sunday, February 11, 2007
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<P class=StoryText align=justify>Paradoxically, journalists in the western world tend to have less freedom of expression than most of their fellow citizens. Their freedom is often circumscribed by their employment.<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=157 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>John Maxwell</SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>In Jamaica, their freedom is further restricted by the presence in the media of people masquerading as journalists whose main qualification appears to be an inability to keep their mouths shut, especially when the subject is as exotic and arcane as politics and the environment.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Most of them do not understand the first thing about human rights in general and freedom of the press in particular. Even some real journalists appear not to have informed themselves on the subject as completely as they ought, despite decades of journalistic experience.<P class=StoryText align=justify>And relative newcomers such as the cartoonist Las May really owe it to themselves to find out what it really means, his pitiful cartoons on the subject notwithstanding. His most egregious: picturing himself as an icon for freedom of the press, having been stabbed in the back by Desmond Richards, president of the Press Association. If he regards that as a stab in the back, this column to him must count as the attempted assassination of press freedom.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Freedom of the press does not belong to the press, as many imagine. Freedom of the press is a human right derived from the freedom of expression guaranteed supposedly in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and documents such as the Jamaican and Trinidad Constitution. Freedom of the press, being a human right, cannot belong to corporations.<P class=StoryText align=justify>As I said in my fourth column for this newspaper, in April 1996: "Of all the people in the English speaking world, editors have the least real freedom, the most restricted human rights. In France, and many European countries, editors and editorial boards really do run their papers, and the proprietors behave as they do in any other business, leaving the management to the managers. Their relations are governed by 'statutes' which define policy and mark out territory for both sides."<P class=StoryText align=justify>Those remarks were provoked by a controversy in Trinidad, where freedom of the press is supposedly guaranteed in the constitution. That did not prevent<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width=140 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>
</TD></TR><TR><TD><SPAN class=Description>CHAPLIN. unfortunately, the code of ethics is not widely adhered to and very few journalists, especially the younger ones, are aware of the provisions </SPAN></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><P class=StoryText align=justify>Mr Anthony Sagba, the head honcho of McAl Alston, the Trinidad Guardian's parent company, telling his editorial employees some years ago to shut up and mind their business. Mr Sagba refused to allow his journalists to question the behaviour of the conglomerate which owned the paper and its dealings with the government.<P class=StoryText align=justify>In graphic language, Mr Sagba was reported to have said that in addition to employing journalists he sold things like razor blades in his supermarkets and he wasn't about to let his Journalists damage him any mor