“We need to protect the democracy,” said Mr. Wells, Independent Member of Parliament for Bamboo Town, while noting that the Tribune controls or manages several radio stations, including 100 JAMZ, Cool 96, and Joy FM.
He also said there was “talk on the street” that the Tribune was negotiating to purchase the Nassau Guardian although he admitted that he could not verify this. Mr. Wells said it appeared that “a very dangerous trend is being put in place.”
“You’re ending up now with a monopoly in communications and in addition to that, Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding that they are now in the process of negotiating to buy the Guardian,” he said in the House of Assembly. “You have to ask yourself, Mr. Speaker, who is behind all of this and what is the purpose of it.”
Rising on a point of order, Minister of Tourism Obie Wilchcombe, who is also responsible for broadcasting, said he fully understood the concerns raised by the Bamboo Town MP.
“What he is referring to is the domination of the Tribune broadcasting [which] has all to do with the fact that we do not have in place regulations,” Minister Wilchcombe said.
“We are now, after several years of thorough investigations throughout the United States, in Europe, in Canada and the Caribbean, coming to this parliament during the budget debate with regulations because what the Tribune had in fact been able to do had to be stopped by the [Federal Communications Commission] in the United States.”
The minister said the U.S. case involved “the same thing” the Tribune is apparently doing now where an entity said it was “managing” stations, but those stations actually came under one ownership.
“So we are very concerned about that as well,” he said. “And I’m one of these individuals who believe that you should not be able to control the airwaves as the Tribune has been doing in the past. I believe it should be liberal and I believe that we should be able to have individuals who want to own stations [be able to] own stations.”
Mr. Wells said this was eactly his position back in the 1990’s.
“In terms of the regulations that you’re now talking about they should have been in place a long time ago,” he said. “Our society, Mr. Speaker, is too small to have one media house controlling all the newspapers and the radio stations. It’s a very, very dangerous precedent and the government should be on [its] guard.”
Mr. Wells claimed that 70 percent of the public reads the Tribune and knows that the paper has some kind of an agenda. He said it is another reason why the Tribune should not be able to monopolise media. Mr. Wells said this would be “trouble”.
He added readers expect the Tribune to be against the PLP.
“The Guardian is a different kettle of fish and when you see an attempt is being made to take over the Guardian as well and put it in the same hands, whether they are managers or owners, you know that something else is afoot. I say thinking Bahamians put on your thinking caps and beware.”
Mr. Wells said he wants to ensure that the distribution, dissemination and communication of news and information are not in the hands of one group.
He said more groups should be participating in media.
“The larger the number of groups, the better because you would have different views out there,” Mr. Wells said.
Minister of Works and Utilities Bradley Roberts at that point pointed out that with modern technology, communicating is much simpler than it used to be.
“You can disseminate information significantly other than using traditional daily newspapers. It’s called the Internet,” Minister Roberts said. “You can have your own website, Mr. Speaker. As a matter of fact, I glean more information from the websites than I do from the newspapers.”
He noted that many newspapers are available around the world on websites. These newspapers include the Bahama Journal and the Nassau Guardian.
“So as far as the question of domination, I think those people who may be thinking that they may be cornering a situation may really be wasting their own time, Mr. Speaker, because of this new modern technology that is available today and the organisation to whom he is alluding is possibly moving toward [a monopoly is] not available on the Internet,” said Minister Roberts, who is viewed as one of the more technology-savvy ministers in the government and in fact has his own website.
“So they are in fact being behind the eight ball in my opinion.”
But Mr. Wells said the Bahamian public buys around 30,000 to 40,000 copies of newspapers every day “and that’s very significant.”
Independent Member of Parliament for St. Margaret Pierre Dupuch, the brother of the Tribune’s publisher, said he agreed, “we need to ensure that there is no monopoly in the media business.”
Mr. Dupuch added, “I don’t really believe what he says about the Tribune buying the Guardian.”
He said his family has always maintained that giving too much to one family in the newspaper business would be dangerous for the country.
“I seriously doubt, although I have no way of proving it, that that position has been changed in our family. For this person it hasn’t changed,” Mr. Dupuch said.
By: Candia Dames, The Bahama Journal
