THE  Private Sector Commission (PSC) has condemned in the strongest possible manner, an article published in the Kaieteur News of Sunday  February 24, 2013, under the caption: ‘Muse or Amuse’ which it said makes the most scurrilous and defamatory allegations against two senior and highly respected members of the Commission’s Board.

“The allegations are completely devoid of truth and have absolutely no foundation in fact and none are offered to sustain the allegations in the article,” the PSC said in a statement.
The offending Kaieteur News article stated inter alia that “the private sector will remain the worst in the world so long as people like (Gerry) Gouveia and (Ramesh) Dookhoo remain there the business sector may never realise how these men sold them out for their personal gains.”
The Private Sector Commission said it holds the publisher and editorial management of the Kaieteur News and author of the article directly responsible for the publication of this “sordid and malicious scandal mongering” in a newspaper which claims to be a national newspaper and which demands the right to press freedom.
It said the allegations in the article are made without a scintilla of evidence and attack the moral characters, professional integrity and good name of the persons named in the article. Much worse, it accuses them of corrupt and criminal behaviour and, by inference, the Commission and the entire private sector along with them.
“The disgraceful publication of this rubbish displays the worst form of gutter journalism and completely demeans the profession of journalism in Guyana,” the PSC stated.
It is this kind of publication which, in fact, is calculated to invite the suppression of press freedom and which denigrates everything that a free press is founded on and stands for, the Commission posited.
The PSC reminded that there are laws of libel and defamation which are supposed to protect citizens from publications which indulge themselves in vicious character assassination of this sort. Unfortunately, however, they move through the courts at such a snail’s pace that retribution and punishment are so long delayed that irresponsible publishers are encouraged all too often to abandon fact for fiction and truth for slander and get away with it.
The majority of Guyana’s media have subscribed to and signed on to a Code of Conduct setting out the salient principles of fairness, balance, accuracy and the professional practice and standards expected of the media. The Kaieteur News was a signatory to that Code. While the Code of Conduct referred specifically to the conduct of our elections, it is to be expected that it would apply and be adhered to at all times by all the signatories, the PSC argued.

Amongst other things, the Code obliges our media to:

* Provide a truthful, comprehensive, accurate, balanced and fair account of events in a context which gives them meaning; and

* verify the authenticity of the author/s of correspondence received for publication, using all the available sources open for confirmation of contact information.

The Code also obliges our media to respect and promote the “principles of tolerance and respect for human dignity”.

The PSC said there is absolutely nothing in the publication of this slanderous article by the Kaieteur News which honours the Code of Conduct  which they have signed  and everything which violates it.
“We ask that the Guyana Press Association and the Guyana Media Owners Association pay attention.  We ask in the hope that they will take the appropriate action to address the deplorable level to which sections of our media have fallen in what purports to be the practice of journalism,” the PSC chided.
“We ask, lest the very freedom of expression upon which the practice of the professional journalism is founded, is eroded and, ultimately, threatened,” it added.