TTT BACK AS PNM’S PROPAGANDA ARM

SHORTLY after the PNM won the 2015 general election, I attended a meeting of heads of agencies under the Communications Ministry, called by Minister Maxie Cuffie.

Cuffie asked about billings for election broadcasts and advertising.

I told him that Caribbean New Media Group (CNMG) had insisted on pre-payments.

“You mean, you sent out invoices?” the minister asked.

“Now, we were pre-paid,” I responded.

I understood Cuffie’s scepticism.

When I became Chief Executive Officer in October 2010, I found that the PNM was indebted by some $800,000 for election broadcasts.

I sent multiple requests for payments, all of which were ignored by Balisier House.

Years later, party boss Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley publicly acknowledged the debt.

Before the 2010 general election, the PNM had also suborned the taxpayer-owned media house for several propaganda broadcasts, none of which the party paid for.

CNMG booked a broadcast with Congress of the People, but televised a PNM meeting instead.

The TV station carried a feed of an international football meeting in Florida, at which there was toxic invective against Jack Warner.

The facilitator of the broadcast was not paid.

There were several similar examples of the abuse of the State facility for PNM political messaging.

That, of course, was in addition to manipulating news and talk programmes.

When the Rowley Administration took national office – and the company reverted to the name TTT – the airing of free PNM political functions resumed.

Opposition parliamentarian Sadam Hosein queried sometime ago whether payments were made for the broadcasts of certain identified PNM meetings.

Hosein was told there were no such payments.

That practice is almost sure to continue into the upcoming general election season.

Millions of dollars will be forfeited by TTT, an insolvent company that has cost taxpayers some $300 million during the nine-year tenure of the Rowley Administration.

TTT has also become a PNM production house, an employment home for party hacks and an online base for party propaganda.

It is a media plaything of the ruling regime.

Unlike during the tenure of the Kamla Persad-Bissessar administration, there is no uproar from pious media commentators, several of whom are feeding at the Government trough.

Most media practitioners who were witnesses to the blatant manipulation of a key taxpayer asset are afraid – or unwilling – to speak out.

The Media Association and Publishers and Broadcasters Association have lost the militancy they displayed during the tenures of anti-PNM regimes.

So, too, most civil commentators.

TTT’s recent failure to transmit a Divali Nagar address by Ms. Persad-Bissessar created a national ripple, but it was only one example of the manoeuvring of the broadcaster.

Days after the PNM’s 2015 electoral victory, company chair Helen Drayton questioned me about the news transmission of a UNC activity.

That partisan business custom has clearly become entrenched at Maraval Road.

The exploitation and undermining of TTT fits snugly into the undercutting and destabilisation of several independent national agencies.

Most such institutions have become footstools of an autocratic administration in a land of growing apathy.

There is no reasonable justification for a State-owned broadcaster in a sea of media houses and amid the slow death of the traditional industry.

But TTT – funded by hard-pressed taxpayers – will remain on air as the PNM’s propaganda arm.