General Secretary Mr. Clement Rohee, yesterday, expressed the People’s Progressive Party’s (PPP’s) concerns over what he called “bias” in sections of the media, in particular Stabroek News.
He said his expression follows an in-house survey comparing coverage in the local dailies.The full text of his statement on the matter, which was issued at a Freedom House, Robb Street, Georgetown press conference said:
“The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) has, for some time, been exposing the bias which the Stabroek News has had in favour of the PNC led APNU and against the PPP.
“As General Secretary of the party, I have expressed, on many occasions, the view that the Stabroek News, in particular, has an agenda which is about removing the PPP from government and replacing it with the People’s National Congress (PNC) and retrogressive forces.
“When Barbara Haig came to Guyana, in 1986, with the cheque from the National Endowment for Democracy, to establish the Stabroek News, the stated goal was to ensure that there was a press in Guyana that would provide balanced reporting and contribute to an informed democracy, where the citizenry can make their own deliberate decisions.
“Today, the Stabroek News has not only departed from this noble objective, but has, blatantly, become the mouthpiece for the People’s National Congress (PNC).
An analysis
“Not wanting to arrive at this conclusion, in spite of what informed sources have said to us, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) did an analysis of the coverage which the Stabroek News has, from September to December 2013, given the Parliamentary political parties.”
These are our findings:
* In the four-month period, the Stabroek News covered these three political parties sixty eight (68) times. The PNC/APNU has 68 percent of the coverage; the AFC had 24 percent of the coverage while the party with the largest amount of seats in the National Assembly, the PPP, had less than 10 percent of the coverage.
* The other interesting finding that the PPP discovered was that, during the period, the Stabroek News totally blanked the PPP Press Conferences from its newspaper’s pages. I repeat, during this period there was no coverage of the PPP press conferences by the Stabroek News; rather Stabroek News covered more than 50 percent of the APNU press conferences.
These hard facts now, empirically, confirm what the PPP has known for some time about the pro-APNU anti-PPP position of the Stabroek News.
The PPP has no problem with any media house endorsing and supporting a political view or political party.
However, all media houses have a duty to be responsible in providing balanced coverage of the political views.
The PPP encourages its members, supporters and sympathisers to be vigilant and to ensure that they are informed about the party’s positions on the issues via the several other sources to which they have access.