Dear Editor,
AT the weekly PPP press conference on Thursday (May 4, 2023), General Secretary Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo made it clear that the party, and the current PPP/C administration are committed without reservation, to the protection of press freedom in Guyana.

Moreover, Jagdeo who is also the Vice President of the PPP/C administration, underlined the rights of journalists to do their work without harassment or fear. President, Dr. Irfaan Ali, has also repeatedly affirmed the positive relationship between a free press, and democratic freedoms in general.

In the context of the above, I would like to offer some perspectives on the expectations and challenges of writers and editors, and the ways in which the work they do can either contribute to a deepening and broadening of democracy or, do the opposite, by threatening free speech and democratic freedoms.

Most readers have probably never heard of Professor Hans J. Morgenthau, yet his thoughts on what writers and editors do, and should do, are relevant to our discussion. Morgenthau escaped German fascism and migrated to the US. He wrote Politics Among Nations, one of the most influential works on international politics in the twentieth century. Morgenthau was a political realist, meaning that in contradistinction to political idealism, which is focused on what ought to be, he was concerned with the world as it existed. Morgenthau was against the Vietnam war, and because of that, his writings in the press and his speeches against the war, were rubbished by the established press. The established press turned anti-war only after the Tet Offensive.

In Summer 1965 (no specific date provided), Professor Morgenthau wrote the following – “The writer is nothing without his language. Take his language away, and you have silenced him. Put words into his mouth, and you have made him speak in a voice not his own. Refuse him the right to say what he wants to say in his own words, and you have as thoroughly destroyed his freedom, nay, himself as though you had sealed his lips and chained his hands.” (Truth and Politics, 1970, p. 60)

These are not simply words of wisdom in the abstract, but insights that were hatched in the brutal experiences of the Cold War. Like Morgenthau, all serious writers are caught among several contending forces. They must broadly abide to the editorial policy of their outlet, which often also means pleasing the publisher who is not a ‘creative’ individual per se, but owner of the means of production, in this case, quite literally so. In Guyana, we can see this with the naked eye.

At the same time, the writer, the journalist, has a responsibility to the public, because without that as the guiding light, writing then becomes either an instrument of personal glory, or worse yet, a voice for the mechanical reproduction of the ideas, ideologies, preferences, and jouissance of the political elite, or ‘big capital’.

Editors also have their challenges. For Morgenthau, the editor has three choices, namely, print the original submission as is, suggest changes which the writer can accept or reject, or reject the manuscript. However, “what he cannot do is substitute his judgement for that of the author” (p. 56). Morgenthau castigates too much editorial interference as “barbarization.”
On the other hand, editorial practice that is based on a single regime of truth can only be hatched and sustained in totalitarian political systems.

The editor, therefore, is also in a difficult bind. They must broadly abide by the wishes of the publisher which means giving up some degree of independent judgement. Yet, if they do so blindly, they are killing the intent and judgement of writers.

Now, back to General Secretary Jagdeo’s press conference in which he again affirmed the right of journalists to “freely express yourself.” I encourage journalists in Guyana to take those words in the literal sense intended, albeit that there is respect for the facts and evidence as they exist. Dr. Jagdeo noted that the professional work done by journalists is often reworked to suit political obligations. Apropos, in the words of Hans Morgenthau, “the editor would have his right to impose his judgement upon the author only if there existed one correct philosophy, one correct kind of argumentation, and one correct way of writing to the exception of all others” (p. 57).

One real exception as Jagdeo pointed out, is when political personalities hide behind the language of “freedom of the press” to commit acts of criminality, such as calls to political violence expressed by the WPA’s Tacuma Ogunseye and his followers.

Writers and editors play a definitive role in shaping the world as we know it. Writing itself is constitutive of the reality which we take to be just there. This is so because the writer and the editor are central producers of meaning. They also ‘adjudicate’ the meaning of meaning.

Yours sincerely,
Dr Randolph Persaud