Above: Journalist Wesley Gibbings.

Trinidad and Tobago journalist Wesley Gibbings has been elected to serve on the Steering Comittee of the Global Forum for Media Development.

The announcement was made at the GFMD General Assembly on September 30 in Tirana, Albania, following weeklong online elections.

The ACM was represented at the event, in person, by Netherlands-based Surinamese journalist and ACM Europe Representative, Marvin Hokstam.

The Global Forum is an international network of 200 journalism support and media development organisations. It’s not the first time for Gibbings, who served on the first Steering Committee established in Amman, Jordan in 2005.

He will represent the Caribbean and Latin America region alongside Mijal Iastrebner, managing director of Argentina’s Sembra Media.

Gibbings also serves as Vice President of the Jamaica-based Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC) and is a member of the Council of IFEX (formerly International Freedom of Expression Exchange), headquartered in Canada.

In 2017, he was awarded the Percy Qoboza International Journalist Award by the US National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) for his role in press freedom advocacy in the Caribbean.The ACM was last represented in this capacity by Guyanese journalist and ACM Executive Member, Denis Chabrol, who served from 2016 to 2021.

Gibbings also serves as Vice President of the Jamaica-based Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC) and is a member of the Council of IFEX (formerly International Freedom of Expression Exchange), headquartered in Canada.

In 2017, he was awarded the Percy Qoboza International Journalist Award by the US National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) for his role in press freedom advocacy in the Caribbean.

He has been in the media business for close to 40 years, has trained journalists throughout the region and authored/co-authored a number of training manuals for use by Caribbean journalists.

Gibbings has written extensively on Caribbean media affairs and has presented papers on a wide range of subjects related to press freedom and media development at international conferences and seminars. He is also the author of five collections of poems.