I WRITE as an ordinary citizen. If there is an interest in the State media representing the broad affairs of our country in a balanced fashion, and not being excessively weighted to viewpoint of whatever party holds the Executive, then the solution is not in cutting its budget to squeeze it, but in reforming the management system in such a way that the state media is financed directly by Parliament and answers to Parliament for its outputs. National awareness and education is essential to nation building and should be of paramount concern to the Parliament. The state media has an important role to play in achieving these things. I dare say much of this has to be remedial education that has to reach adult audiences and remote locations. This takes money and investment in the up-skilling of media workers. I am mindful as I write this that media monitoring efforts in Guyana have consistently found that privately owned media operations are just as prone to bias as the state media. What we need is better not smaller national media.

Our Parliament should be aiming to make our national media better, more representative, and stronger rather than suffer it with budget cuts. These are basic and reasonable expectations, which I am sure, are widely held by the citizenry. I hope that Parliament will move in the right direction.