{"id":4649,"date":"2013-06-17T10:15:24","date_gmt":"2013-06-17T15:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/?p=4649"},"modified":"2013-06-17T10:26:59","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T15:26:59","slug":"letter-to-office-of-the-president-re-ncn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/?p=4649","title":{"rendered":"Letter to Office of the President Re: NCN"},"content":{"rendered":"

His Excellency Mr. Donald Ramotar
\nPresident of the Republic of Guyana
\nOffice of the President
\nShivnarine Chanderpaul Drive
\nBourda, Georgetown
\n11th June 2013,
\nDear Sir,
\nRe. Opposition access to the National Communications Network (NCN)
\nFurther to our informal discussion on the issue above, the Alliance For Change (AFC) hereby brings to
\nyour attention areas of serious concern regarding the operation of NCN.NCN’s news coverage is appallingly biased in favour of the government and its radio and\u00a0television stations consistently refuse to convey to the public the views of the opposition\u00a0political parties along with their supporting rationale.<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

\ufffd\ufffd The elected representatives who appear and share their views on NCN’s various programs are
\nalmost exclusively from the minority governing political party.
\n\ufffd\ufffd NCN routinely broadcasts programs in which lengthy presentations of pro-government positions
\nare made without any opportunity for contrasting views to be expressed.
\n\ufffd\ufffd NCN has on several occasions refused to carry paid political advertisements from the AFC.
\n\ufffd\ufffd NCN has on several occasions refused to carry other paid programs from the AFC.
\nWe believe that the state media, where it exists, has a duty to provide accurate and complete
\ninformation to the citizens of the state, and that in this regard NCN is woefully deficient. This
\ndeficiency can do irreparable harm to the country by undermining the credibility of the State and
\ndiscriminating against sections of the population by denying them access to their political
\nrepresentatives via the state media. It also adds to the perception that Guyana is not yet a full-fledged
\nfunctioning democracy. Further, we feel that such misuse of the State media undermines any
\nimprovement in relations between the parliamentary political parties.
\nWith this in mind, we are attaching a list of measures which we would like to see implemented in order
\nto correct these glaring deficiencies. We ask that you treat this as urgent. We further recommend a
\ncomprehensive reform of the state media following meaningful consultations with a broader crosssection
\nof stake holders.\u00a0The AFC is ready to work with all stakeholders in order to ensure that the citizens of Guyana are better\u00a0served by the state media.
\nYours sincerely
\nDavid Patterson
\nGeneral Secretary<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

Measures to be urgently addressed regarding the operation of NCN
\n1. NCN, in keeping with good journalism practices, must afford the political opposition the right-ofreply
\nto all statements, allegations or references made with regard to those parties, their
\nleaders, their views and their actions.
\n2. NCN, in recognition of the will of the people of Guyana, must immediately make available at
\nleast one hour of free, live airtime to each parliamentary political party every week.
\n3. NCN must also immediately make available at least one hour of paid airtime to each political
\nparty every week.
\n4. The Boards of Directors of NCN and other state media must be changed to reflect a broader
\ncross-section of our society and include persons nominated by the political opposition.
\n5. NCN must make available its recorded footage of parliamentary debates to members of the
\npublic and other media houses for use as they see fit. This need not be free of cost.
\n6. The full implementation of UNESCO’s Best Practices Source Book for Public Service Broadcasting
\nThis list is by no means exhaustive and merely represents a few corrective measures that the AFC feels
\ncan easily be implemented as a sign of good faith by the Government pending a comprehensive reform
\nof state media organizations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

His Excellency Mr. Donald Ramotar President of the Republic of Guyana Office of the President Shivnarine Chanderpaul Drive Bourda, Georgetown 11th June 2013, Dear Sir, Re. Opposition access to the National Communications Network (NCN) Further to our informal discussion on the issue above, the Alliance For Change (AFC) hereby brings to your attention areas of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7134,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pressreleases"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/image001-2.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4F7T1-1cZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4649"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4654,"href":"https:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4649\/revisions\/4654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afcguyana.com\/afcnew\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}