Above: Robert Taylor speaking during the introductions to the new executive members.

Screen recording of the Quarterly General Meeting, January 08, 2022

Text of the President’s report delivered by Ira Mathur

President’s report, Quarterly General Meeting, January 08, 2022.

Resignation of three members and introduction of the new Executive.

Following the resignation of three members of the MATT executive on December 13, 2021, Asha Javeed, Laura Dowrich and Kalain Hosein from the posts of vice-president, assistant secretary and treasurer, the MATT executive, after deliberations that included the advice of MATT elders, voted in a unanimous quorum to abide by our 35-year-old constitution and follow its guidelines for the appointment of members to the vacant posts.

The Executive remains committed to transparency, democracy and good governance, and we are guided by elders in the journalism community who have offered support as the organisation reorganises.

Biographies and the announcement of the newly appointed members of the executive are here.

Membership outreach

On October 2nd, 2021, we assumed responsibility for a MATT though strong on the fourth estate, had very little engagement. The fraternity struggling in the pandemic was disinterested in joining MATT.

We understood if we wanted a more robust Fourth Estate, it was vital to create a cohesive professional fraternity, including freelance workers, those working in silos and formerly excluded media workers who have a constitutional place in this organisation.

On October 02, we asked for three months to grow the membership without requiring fees to join. Even before the nomination, the membership supported this. Since then, the mailing list has grown from about 30 to over 180 members.

Silos were merged, and we have created a registry still under construction of all members. Bloggers and freelancers, journalists without institutional support, joined. We welcomed photographers and technical people

Just 10 % of our membership are associate members, and our constitution allows them to be part of our Association.
The free online form ended on January 03, and new members will be asked to pay the existing fee of $75 plus the new member’s fee of $60. All membership renewals will be due on the 3rd of January2023.

Big Picture Issues

The Cybercrime Bill, the Whistleblower Protection Act, the Data Protection Act, and the Broadcast Code – could have a chilling effect on press freedom and free expression online if adopted. They have not, and we are keeping a close eye on them.

Access for Journalists.

Immediately before the elections, there were concerns over the limits on the number of media allowed in the Parliament to cover the Budget and general concerns about accessibility to Government information in a pandemic.

The first day after we took office, we wrote to the Speaker and got a media pool photographer into Parliament to cover the Budget. It was not ideal, but we opened the door to more access
The question of access came up again on December 10. Members of the media were not allowed inside either of the swearings-in events or sitting of the Assembly for new officers of the Tobago House of Assembly.

MATT wrote to the President’s House to express concern over “the dramatic limitations” placed on the media, particularly photographers. We hope that Robert Taylor’s addition to the Executive to make more representation across government and related platforms for greater access to photographers.

Early on, our membership also expressed concerns about the lack of access to the Ministry of Health press conferences on Covid-19, citing both limited time and lack of entry at the press conferences for freelance journalists and digital media.

MATT raised these concerns with the Minister of Health and the CMO, who agreed subsequently to include weekly questions from within the membership. We have been collating and sending questions every week for over two months.

Further complaints from members on the restrictive Covid 19 format MATT wrote to the Minister of Health for additional access and transparency regarding Covid19 infections and deaths.

The Minister of Health responded to MATT with a phone call revealing that based on our intervention, the Ministry has limited the speaking time and speakers of Ministry officials, leaving up to 45 minutes longer for journalists to ask questions and follow up questions.

The report on that meeting is here.

He pointed us to the email of Candice Alcantara – Manager, Corporate Communications, who has assured us the questions will be dealt with promptly. We believe our call for greater information contributed to further transparency, including the currently MOH boards showing the numbers of vaccination status and the comorbidities amongst those who died from COVID.

Honouring media workers

Following this, we honoured two photographers at the Express, Chief Photographer Robert Taylor and Ishmael Salandy, for their collaborative coverage of the BudgetBudget in a Pandemic.

Even as we honored Robert and Ishmael, we recognised they could not have contributed to the pool photographs without the Heads of Photography at the Guardian,
Newsday and the decisions of the Editors in Chief of Newsday, Guardian and Express

TTPBA

We have met with the TTPBA.

As is not unexpected, there have been various complaints about the practice of journalism.
On November 22, following allegedly defamatory statements made by a radio announcer and the Government’s ‘demand’ for a copy of the programme.

MATT issued a statement recognising that media, as the Fourth Estate and a public accountability watchdog, is mandated to ensure that the Government is held to account and the public’s business is conducted transparently, and public records available to all.

We reminded colleagues of these rights; we must remain vigilant both within and without our profession to ensure that we self-regulate to abide by the same high standards we expect of others.

Similarly, MATT issued a statement one day after the Prime Minister criticised Sunday Express for a story on vaccines. St Augustine Medical Laboratory (STAML) and the Chinese Embassy also complained.

Once again, MATT underscored that our professional organisation has no legal or constitutional jurisdiction over individual newsrooms and their reporters, who are accountable to their editors and respective media houses positioned to benefit from upholding the highest professional standards.

On both occasions, reminded the public that regarding complaints against media houses, the formal process is to file a complaint with the MCC, an independent body created but not managed by the TT Publishers and Broadcasters Association. The process involves a reply within a week after the complaint is made to the MCC.”

Training

We had two training sessions, both of which were exceptionally well attended.
On Saturday, October 30, we held a panel discussion on Media coverage of Covid19 with President of the Medical Association, Dr Vishi Beharry, communications consultant and former editor of the Guardian newspaper Nicole Duke-Westfield and head of news at News 7 Kejan Haynes. The session was themed Covering covid19: how TT media covered the pandemic?

On November 27, 2021, Mark Lyndersay moderated a discussion with journalists who have put their journalism online and built new brands for today’s audiences held a panel discussion establishing a journalism presence online featuring TT Weathercentre’s Kalain Hosein, Wired868’s Lasana Liburd and AZPNews’ Prior Beharry.

We welcome all ideas from the membership on further panel discussions with an active partnership with the law and medical associations.

Health and Support

A study conducted by the International Federation of Journalists on global journalism in the current COVID-19 era last year polled 1300 frontline journalists in 77 countries and found the following.

1. Nearly every freelance journalist has lost revenue or work opportunities
2. More than half of all journalists are suffering from stress and anxiety
3. More than a quarter lack essential equipment to enable them to work safely from home, while one in four lack any protective equipment to work in the field.
4. Many journalists have been arrested, faced lawsuits, or assaulted.
5. More than a third of journalists have shifted their focus to covering Covid-19 related stories.

On October 02, MATT recognised that many freelance journalists are unsupported and pledged to deliver a health plan and a rewards card for journalists, not unlike the Law Association. Though this plan has been placed on the back-burner, we hope to revive it soon.

The Association remains concerned about Covid-19 transmission, particularly the highly infectious Omicron variant and encourages practitioners to use the best possible protective wear available during this time. On December 28, after a donation of 4000 N95 Masks to media, MATT distributed a total of 3,975 masks 250 practitioners in some 25 media houses across platforms. The entire accounting is on our website.

Thank you

Text of the Treasurer’s report, delivered by Mark Lyndersay

There’s not much to report from the Treasurer’s perspective. The handover from the previous executive is still in progress, so we have had no access to the bank accounts. That also means that we have spent none of MATT’s financial resources to date.

As of the last bank statements in our possession, the MATT account has a balance of $122,885.31, but that will have incremented upward slightly as a result of interest earnings.

There would have been no further revenue inflows after the current executive’s took office and the membership approved our strategy to raise membership numbers by waiving the required fees.

That experiment boosted numbers and ended on January 03. Because the current mix of members blends those who joined during the no-fee trial period and those who paid for a year of membership, it was decided to make all current members valid until December 31, 2022, after which fees for current members will be due.

All members joining the association after January 01, 2022 will be on the membership clock that they paid for.

The executive has also moved to digitize the paper records that we received from the previous executive at the start of our term of office.

These scanned documents run from 1987 to 2005. The documents retained between 1995 to 1997 are the most comprehensive, with other years varying widely in document retention. Blank check books, bank statements and the financial records of two Carnival fetes were not scanned.

The website of the Media Association went live on October 03, 2022 and in its first three months reported 5,024 views delivered to 3,739 visitors.

The executive views this medium as an opportunity to not only communicate with the membership and the wider civil community, but as a medium which allows us to do so with transparency.

We encourage members to consider how they might contribute to its development.
Regarding the finances of its production, I am the webmaster and paid for the domain, hosting it on the service I use for my other websites at no cost to the association.