An anonymous writer in the Antigua Sun in its column, Sun Speak, of Thursday 10th January appeared to be berating the efforts of Prime Minister Lester Bird to secure a meeting of Caribbean Information Ministers to discuss the sudden closure of the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) last Friday.

The writer's concerns about the Prime Minister's initiative arise from what he calls "the poor state of ABS radio and TV". "If Antigua and Barbuda cannot rescue state-run media house ABS, how then can they rescue CMC?" the writer asks.

The question misses the point. Even if one were to accept the writer's contention that ABS Radio and TV are in a poor state, the Prime Minister's initiative in calling for CARICOM Information Ministers to examine the closure of CMC in no way worsens or improves ABS.

Mr Bird has not suggested that the government of Antigua and Barbuda alone should consider CMC's future, nor has he proposed that Antigua and Barbuda should allocate resources to "rescuing" CMC as the writer infers. That inference misconstrues the Prime Minister's initiative.

It may very well be that ABS Radio and TV are in need of what the writer called "radical restructuring" and the application of "some modern management principles", but an effort by CARICOM governments to ensure the continued free flow of information, news and analysis in the region by an indigenous regional institution in no way deprives ABS Radio and TV of that attention.

Had the writer taken the position that the government of Antigua and Barbuda should both pursue its initiative to examine the survival of CMC and consider how ABS Radio and TV could be enhanced, I would have endorsed his view. The two things are not mutually exclusive. Local attention to the challenges of ABS would not be restricted by regional consideration of CMC's problems.

The real issue is that CMC, unlike ABS Radio and TV, has closed. It is no longer providing the invaluable service that it has for the last 26 years and a deep void has been created in the flow of information in CARICOM which is now solidifying efforts to create a single market and economy. The ordinary citizen throughout the Caribbean - those who have no access to the Internet and cannot afford subscriptions to regional newspapers - are deprived of information on radio, television and newspapers that inform them of events and developments in the region that directly and indirectly affect their lives.

It is the closure of CMC that ratchets it up the list of things that require urgent attention. It is that urgency to which the Prime Minister has responded.
In the early 1970s, the Caribbean was in a similar situation. There was no Caribbean News Agency (CANA) and no Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) which seventeen months ago merged to become CMC. The region relied on the BBC's Caribbean service and three metropolitan-based news agencies, Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France Press, for news and analysis of events in its member countries. Information about St Kitts was sent to Paris, Washington and London where it was edited before it was sent to Antigua. Antiguans saw St Kitts through the eyes of distant metropoles. And, that was true of the entire region.

This situation caused the late William G Demas, former Secretary-General of CARIFTA and CARICOM, to remark in 1973 that "the role of the mass media has been to reinforce psychological, cultural and even economic dependence on the region; that has been their role so far. So in a sense, our own institutions aid and abet this process of dependence".

CANA and the CBU were created to correct that situation. The CBU started tentatively in1969 and CANA in 1975. Together, the two institutions revolutionised how the peoples of the Caribbean saw each other and themselves. Without question, they aided the process of Caribbean integration and they contributed to the development of a common Caribbean consciousness.

In 1981, when the first Group of Caribbean Experts were assembled by CARICOM governments to prepare a strategy for the Caribbean integration movement during the decade of the 1980s, they remarked that "progress has been made in co-operation in radio and television broadcasting and in the establishment of the Caribbean News Agency (CANA) which is functioning well in the provision of "hard" news on the countries of the region to each other". But, they went on to observe, "there is still, however, urgent need for more effective communication programmes for the people of the region to learn about each other and about the regional movement". Our own Charlesworth Edwards, then Executive Secretary of the Eastern Caribbean Common Market, was among the Group.

Since 1981, CANA, the CBU and the merged CMC have been trying to fulfil that mandate, not always perfectly for they always suffered from insufficient resources and inadequate support. But, a group of dedicated regional journalists and broadcasters kept on trying. Today both that mandate and the efforts of those journalists lie in shatters, and so too will a deepened integration process and a stronger Caribbean consciousness unless the problem of CMC's closure is addressed.

Eleven years later, in 1992, the West Indian Commission - another group of West Indian experts - told the region in their report, Time for Action, that they could not "emphasise too strongly that Community is about communication". They said, "Without effective communication between the people and the countries of CARICOM, the reality of Community cannot be sustained". Today with the Caribbean buffeted by global economic recession and an international community that is careless about the serious vulnerabilities that beset all our Caribbean countries, there is a great urgency to sustain that "reality of Community".

The West Indian Commission recognised that the broadcasters and journalists in the region has a special role to play in the process of communication in the Caribbean and they identified CANA and the CBU as having a particular role to "energise the integration movement".

Two things have changed since the West Indian Commission's report. The first is the intensified pressure of a difficult international movement that marginalizes small economies such as ours. The second is the all-consuming nature of the foreign culture, opinions and images that dominate television sets throughout the region.

There is now more foreign material on television than ever before. The loss of CMC's brave attempt to present Caribbean opinions, analysis and images to help reinforce our own culture and to build a sense of community, renders us poorer as a people.

It is in this context that the closure of CMC and the initiative of Prime Minister Lester Bird should be viewed. To do nothing about restoring effective communication between the people and the countries of CARICOM is to do ourselves a disservice.

None of this means that ABS Radio and TV should not be "radically restructured" and "modern management principles" applied as the writer in Sun Speak advocates, but the need to do this does not negate the importance of addressing the void that CMC's closure has created.

London,
10th January 2002