Reprinted from Caribbean Net News
caribbeannetnews.com
The recent events in Grenada, notably the personal threats reportedly made against Leroy Noel, a local journalist and a frequent contributor to Caribbean Net News, by no less a person than the Prime Minister of Grenada himself, and Noel’s subsequent detention by police “for questioning,” further illustrate the totality to which some regional governments are out of touch with reality when it comes to the media.
The event that triggered the current confrontation in Grenada between the government and the local media was the publication by the Miami-based Offshore Alert newsletter of a story concerning an alleged cash payment of US$500,000 to Dr Keith Mitchell, the Prime Minister of Grenada, by one Eric Resteiner, a one-time General Ambassador for Grenada.
Mr Resteiner, who obtained a Grenada passport under its now-defunct economic citizenship program, has since been indicted on 33 counts of wire fraud, 9 counts of mail fraud, and 18 counts of money laundering in the US District Court in Massachusetts.
As we have come to expect from Offshore Alert, its story is supported by comprehensive documentation, copies of which are also made available online. Nevertheless, even in the face of such compelling substantiation, the Grenada government appears to have chosen to try to suppress republication of the story domestically by intimidation of the local media.
What they fail to understand, however, is that the world has changed dramatically in recent years, in that news and information that might have been regarded as purely “local” and thus capable of suppression, is now global and therefore available to anyone with access to the Internet.
The time-honoured methods of media suppression and intimidation, so beloved by third-world governments everywhere, just do not work anymore, and the sooner those in power wake up to this fact, the better.
Very often, as appears to be the case in Grenada, embarrassed politicians seek to use the outdated principle of criminal libel as a convenient means of silencing the media but, as one of Caribbean Net News’ correspondents puts it, this needs to be replaced by a new law, one of criminal stupidity, for overreaching politicians.
Politicians and government employees throughout the region would be wise to take note of the storm brewing in Grenada, and of the futility of trying to suppress the media in a democracy in this day and age.
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