Editorial | Democracy and a free press 

There wasn’t much of a fanfare in marking World Press Freedom Day on Sunday.  Jamaica remains 26th out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, with a score (75.87) that places the island in a category where press freedom is satisfactory. Jamaican journalists are largely free to do their jobs.

But, as was highlighted by Eric Falt, UNESCO’s representative for the Caribbean, in an article in this newspaper, a too narrow definition of the issues that constitute, or impact on, press freedom risks masking a deep, unfolding crisis that holds risks for Jamaica and the Caribbean. Across the region, traditional media companies are badly stressed. Some have collapsed. Others face serious financial challenges.

Indeed, in recent months, two respected newspapers silenced their presses. In Trinidad and Tobago, Newsday, founded by journalists, stopped printing after 32 years. In Guyana, the independent and feisty Stabroek News, followed in March after nearly 40 years of publication. Elsewhere, radio stations have gone off air and media companies have experimented with shared services to cut costs and save money.

The simple explanation is that this is the result of disruption of so-called legacy media by new, inexpensive digital platforms with low entry barriers, which has given rise to the citizen journalist. 

That, though, is only part of the answer. It leaves from the analysis the critical questions of who are the major beneficiaries from the retreat of traditional media; who really pays the bills; and, ultimately, the cost to Jamaican and Caribbean society.

Three years ago, Mia Mottley, Barbados’ prime minister, speaking in her then role as chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), estimated that the global hyperscalers, the big technology companies, that offer services from entertainment to the sale of products, extracted around US$11.6 billion from the region, where they had no office, hired no staff or paid no taxes.

Before Ms Mottley had raised the issue in the context of the need for the region to invest in new information technologies and CARICOM’s long-declared intention to establish a single, seamless telecommunications space, regional media had raised with the community the effects of the hyperscalers.  Part of their model, and success, has been their ability to vacuum up for free the journalistic and other content of regional media organisations. 

COMPETE DIRECTLY

Yet, they compete directly with Caribbean media for advertising to audiences partly built on that content.  Increasingly, too, it is Big Tech-owned operators who control advertising placed on Caribbean digital platforms, for which they corral the lion’s share of the revenue.

In other words, regional media organisations pay the salaries of journalists and otherwise finance their news gathering and other content creation. But they increasingly do so without the compensatory income that ensures viability.

The argument by, and in favour of, untempered disruption is that legacy media should either go out of business or change their business models by adopting new technologies and adapting to the new environment.  That argument, on its face, is reasonable. And legacy media have long been moving in that direction.

But there are other costs to be counted.

First, with organised, independent media gone, it oughtn’t to be expected that citizen journalists or the hyperscalers will fill the slack. They won’t in a way the society expects of media in advancing societies.

Indeed, Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness, and others in his government, have gone from enthusiastic proponents of social media becoming the primary source of information, to deep concern over the Wild West-like information vigilantism of that environment. Often, bloggers and other content purveyors don’t perceive themselves as beholden to facts or to the virtues of context. Falsehoods and misinformation abound.

Which is in stark contrast to the structure and organisation ethics of established media. When traditional media report, their audiences are reasonably assured that their journalists are trained in the science and art of their craft.  They know, too, that the journalists' reports have been subjected to internal invigilation - by the reports themselves and a hierarchy of editors.  If these checks and balances and the reported facts are wrong, there are mechanisms for complaint and correction.

This system of assurance enhances access to credible information with which to make decisions. Its erosion weakens democracy.

DEEPER CONVERSATION

This is a context that demands a deeper and broader conversation of Jamaica’s and the Caribbean’s media landscape and how the region engages in the global digital platforms that operate and benefit in the region without accountability to it.

In 2022, Jamaica’s Fair Trading Commission (FTC) promised review of the fairness of hyperscalers’ operation in this market. It is not clear this study was completed. The finance minister, Favyal Williams, has said that general consumption tax will be applied to some externally provided digital services.

It is, however, unlikely that Jamaica can, on its own, deal with the complex and potentially politically fraught issues raised by the hyperscalers and fairness in the media market. It is urgent that CARICOM moves on the initiatives it has talked about.