It is a pity that Mr. Kit Nascimento, the well known public communications specialist, should have been subjected to a very mean and scurrilous attack in the Kaieteur News last week following his exposure of how media representatives from that newspaper were thwarted from monopolizing a press briefing on progress of the Marriott Hotel project.

The briefing was at the request of Mr. Winston Brassington, Executive Director of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), and Mr. Nascimento was chosen as moderator, based on his recognised accomplishments in media communication and public relations and known to top decision-makers of both the public and private sectors.
Details of how Kaieteur News representatives, among them its Editor-in-Chief Adam Harris, sought to disrupt the normal flow of questions and answers were outlined in a letter from Mr. Nascimento, and published in the Guyana Chronicle on September 20.
What is of particular relevance was Mr. Nascimento’s disclosure of a deplorable recurring practice by media operatives associated with the Kaieteur News to deliberately monopolize a media conference to the serious disadvantage of reporters from other established media enterprises.
As noted by an evidently frustrated Mr. Nascimento, “this is a wholly unprofessional attempt to monopolize the press conference to the exclusion of other media…It’s a practice  which would not be tolerated in any other country respecting the practice of  a free press. Any newspaper attempting it,” lamented Nascimento, “would be pilloried by the press association of the country, but apparently not here…”
More interested `citizens may themselves question the strange silence, or non-response from other sections of the local media about the recurring unprincipled behaviour of those representing the Kaieteur News at press conferences. There is, of course, the related factor of the silence and inaction of what currently exists as the Guyana Press Association (GPA).
This body, claiming to be committed to ethical guidelines and professional integrity, is clearly Missing in Action. In practice, it’s better known to spring into action when crusading against the policies and programmes of the government, and to often roll out emotional statements with an unmistakable political bias.
Such a “press association”, as Mr. Nascimento ought to know, could hardly be expected to become involved in moving to put an end to the rude and unprofessional monopolizing behaviour at press conferences that  now seems to be the norm.
It is an issue to be revisited. For now, it may be illuminating, for public information, to learn from the GPA when last it held a normal general meeting as would be expected from any legitimate and democratic organization. Is it really a credible organization as it now exists?
Mr. Nascimento’s intervention may well prove to be a most timely exposure of the unprofessional conduct by representatives of media enterprises that like to project themselves as seeking after truth and defending “press freedom”.  What a pathetic situation!