EDITORIAL

Silencing the critics

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Over the past six months or so, Cayman Net News has commented many times in editorials about the current government's method of keeping a close reign on information, trying its best to make sure the public only hears what it wants it to hear.

When the news is good, press releases flow freely to the media, and are posted on the Government website for the whole world to read. When the news is not positive, very little or nothing is said or written, and media members who ask questions are treated like pariahs and chastised with statements like "you're not helping." 

It is as if the government hopes that everybody everywhere will believe that only good things happen in the Cayman Islands, and that we keep saying it even to ourselves, maybe we will believe it as well. 

The Government seems to think that the best cure for a problem is denying the problem exists in the first place. Indeed, less than transparent governments the world over have long realised that an uninformed populace is often more content than knowledgeable one.

Of course, keeping the public in the dark with what is really happening in a country rarely has anything to do with what is best for the people, and everything to do with a government maintaining power. 

Simply put, it does not suit a government to report unfavorable news concerning the public interest, lest the voters, enlightened by such revelations, decide to hold those in power accountable, and use their democratic privilege to vote them out of office.

It not surprising, then, that governments try to keep bad news out of the press whenever possible, either by avoiding disclosure or by discrediting critics. These methods, while somewhat objectionable, are nevertheless considered normal in the political sphere. 

However, when a government actively sets in place a policy to silence an independent press such as Cayman Net News, the public has every right to worry about how such actions will affect the democratic process of their country.

Rather than silencing its critics with deeds the naysayers argued could not be done, the present government administration has taken to the task in a more literal and forceful sense. 

Critics here are often ridiculed in public forums, including press conferences, and sometimes even in ways that have nothing to do with the subject of a particular press conference. 

If a member of the media dare ask a challenging question, they might find themselves the brunt of an abusive tirade.

If media house continues to report news that some would rather not have reported, as has been the case with Cayman Net News, they might find their advertisers receiving political pressure to discontinue advertising, in a premeditated policy of attempting to starve out the voice of truth.

If the media still will not bow to the pressure, it might find itself excluded entirely from invitations to press conferences and events to which the more cooperative media members have been invited.

These, more menacing methods of silencing the media are not the ways of a civilised, democratic country, but more reminiscent of a third world dictatorship. 

The governments of the United States, the United Kingdom and other major financial centres do not only allow those in the press that they like to attend media events. Instead, they accept that an open and healthy democratic society will have those who oppose the government as well as those who support it.

Some in the country might think that a media reporting both the good, the bad and at some times even the ugly news is indeed "not helping," especially those with interests vested with the government, or at least protected by it. 

It must be remembered, though, that a country without a vibrant press reporting both sides of the story might soon find less and less interests to protect, as investors look for a more democratic, and therefore stable, place in which to do business.

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