EMBEDDED in the soul of the Guyanese nation since its inception, the State operation of a public media enterprise is, today, so natural, so much a way of life for Guyanese, such a socio-cultural norm, that the national narrative would be lopsided without its existence.

Pundits use the terms ‘State media’ and ‘Government media’ to label the public media enterprise, but that is wholly misleading, for the government merely manages the enterprise. It is publicly-owned, public media, which the government manages, with the State’s media rooms executing its operations. These finer administrative details are important in understanding the nuances of this national communications infrastructure, this alignment between a democratic government and the public who exercise their franchise to decide who governs the society, who speaks for them.

Despite the sordid history of the public media in this country under decades of authoritarian rule after Independence, for Guyana’s efficient democracy to work well in the best interest of Guyanese, public ownership and government management and State oversight of a professional media landscape serves a necessary structural integrity for the society to function as a healthy body politic. This means that government maintaining a State-run media environment is of utmost importance, for three reasons: First, it ought to be within the ecosystem of the public media that a national conversation emerges, a conversation that designs the national narrative of the moment, of the current historical period of the society’s evolution. This idea of a national conversation, around the elected government’s vision for the society, is absolutely crucial, and nobody would more effectively cultivate a workable national narrative of this nature, than the government itself, because, after all, it is their vision to communicate to the public, and a private media house would not take the time and expend the resources to comprehend the government vision, and would not be motivated to share it with the society; Second, as a democracy, voters/citizens freely and fairly elect the government of the day, and it is natural justice for this voter roll– the majority of citizens– to expect that the government would operate a media landscape through which Guyanese feel they can express their voice– the voice of the public, the national voice– through their elected representatives; and, thirdly, the nation needs a media structure that informs Guyanese, communicates with the public, and deploys government’s purposeful path, ideas, development goals, progressive agenda, and its plans, projects, policies and partnerships to the public domain.

This is why the University of Guyana (UG) public communications programme started off with a curriculum, out of India, based upon the idea of Development Support Communication. Every UG communications graduate working in any media company today would have been trained in at least some of these tenets.

It is instructive that the world’s major democracies, including Canada, England, America, Australia, et al, all operate public-owned media environments, with the government of the day managing them, and State employees operating them, In fact, President Joe Biden of the United States immediately appointed a new head of Voice of America, replacing the previous head appointed by former President, Donald Trump.

One feels empathy for the private media houses in this country who, on occasion, call for the Guyanese public media to be disbanded or privatised. Private media enterprises tend to refer to themselves as the independent media, while casting aspersions that public ownership of a media enterprise means government subjects State-employed reporters and journalists to be subservient to officialdom. In fairness to those who make such accusations, the history of this country is replete with control of the public media for clandestine purpose, with the People’s National Congress (PNC) regime particularly prone to suppression of the free and fair operation of media. One therefore understands the paranoia of the private media operators in their suspicions of how the State manages the public media.

However, were these private critics to consider the role of mass media in society’s development, management, and evolution, were they to, for example, examine the work of a media theorist such as Marshall McLuhan, a brilliant media theorist who lectured on the subject at the University of Toronto and published works of great insight as to how media and technology impact society, were they to peruse such material, they would see why democracies resort to public media as a necessary national communication structure. The late McLuhan emphasised the point that “the media is the message” and this is an instructive insight into the role of media in the social engineering and sociocultural development and evolution of a society. For example, private media houses represent the interests of their owners, and although they strive for objectivity and the exercise of professional ethics, they nevertheless function out of a motivation to please their shareholders.

This idea of Guyana maintaining a public media domain is not a light topic. It calls for comprehensive analysis of the history of the country, whereby slavery and Indentureship and colonialism foisted a voiceless, silent suffering state upon subjects. Also, the expectation of Guyanese as to what constitutes the national narrative and the public conversation of the land– their voice– this is within the realm of a public-owned media enterprise.
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