Dear Editor,

I WRITE in response to those who wish to make a mountain out of a molehill with regard to the invitation to the media for the Press Conference held by the President on Tuesday, 16th September, 2025, including a letter from Mr. Roysdale Forde, whom we know to be closely connected with the now politically-discredited APNU.

Mr. Forde, for instance, complains that a deliberate attempt was made to exclude “accredited media houses”. This is not only nonsense, it is also untrue. Who are these “accredited media houses”? Forde fails, in fact, to define what he means by “accredited media houses”.

The Office of the President has established a Presidential Press Corp representing the senior reporters from the established media houses in the country. That is, media houses managed and staffed by persons who are recognized journalists, either by qualification or experience working as genuine journalists.

As it is, the last time I counted, Guyana has something like fifteen (15) functioning media organisations, four (4) newspapers, six (6) broadcast media, and five (5) Online media, a huge number for a country of a population of less than a million people.

Many of the “journalists” in some of these media houses are self-appointed, without any recognisable qualification, never having qualified from a school of broadcast journalism, with little or no experience, never having worked their way up in an established news house. Yet, they pretend to call themselves journalists. They are not.

It is common international practice in democratic countries for the Head of Government, either the President or Prime Minister, to host a selected Press Corp, comprised of senior journalists in the media, at Press Conferences.

The Director of Public Information, Mr. Edward Layne, in a letter to the Stabroek News (Thursday, 18th September, 2025) factually explained precisely how the invitations were issued to the established media houses by the Head of the Press & Publicity Unit in the Office of the President, Mrs. Suelle Findlay-Williams.

On this occasion, the President had decided, at relatively short notice, because of constraints upon his own time with other critical engagements, to hold a Press Conference, importantly, presenting the first and most urgent phase of his government’s transformative agenda.

In order to save time, Mrs. Findlay-Williams used her prerogative to call directly each of the journalists whom she knew to be representing the media houses on the Presidential Press Corp. All of them attended, except Ms. Marcelle Fowler from the Stabroek News. On enquiry for her absence, Stabroek News Editor-in-Chief, Anand Persaud, decided to stand on ceremony, insisting that the invitation should have been issued to him, and, by then, it was too late to rectify the matter. Mr. Persaud can claim that he was not wrong, but he was most certainly not being helpful and hardly practical.

To my astonishment, however, the next day (Wednesday, 17th September, 2025) Stabroek News published a story headlined, “Stabroek News not invited to presidential press conference”, though the story itself reported the fact that “Suelle Findlay-Williams extended an oral invitation to a reporter” of the Stabroek News.

The reporter was a senior reporter, Ms. Marcelle Fowler, giving the lie to the Stabroek News headline.

It is always the absolute prerogative of the Office of the President to decide on which media house should have their nominated reporters accredited to the Presidential Press Corp. That is a prerogative exercised in every democracy and, most certainly, that is the case in the USA and the United Kingdom, for example.

The critics go on to complain that on this occasion, the President limited the number of reporters asking questions to six (6), in fact it was seven (7). I invite them to look at President Donald Trump’s Press Conferences. It is seldom that he would accept questions from as many as six (6) reporters.

In any event, this is not the practice of President Ali. I recall that at his last Press Conference, over nineteen (19) reporters were in attendance, and well over twenty (20) questions were asked. The President, on this occasion, asked that questions be limited only because he was pressed for time.

Glenn Lall, of all people, has devoted almost an entire Editorial in the Kaieteur News of 18th September, 2025, singling me out for special mention. I suppose I should be flattered, but when Glenn Lall was in his teens hustling to make money, I was at UNESCO Championing the Cause of a New World Information Order to resist the first world domination of the news media over the developing world. I have moderated Press Conferences for Jimmy Carter, the Duke of Edinburgh, Forbes Burnham, and Desmond Hoyte.

Glenn Lall owns a newspaper which is politically irresponsible, dedicated to opposing the duly elected government of our country by the majority of our people. Glenn Lall has nothing to teach me about press freedom. Newspapers like Lall’s are, in fact, the greatest threat to press freedom.

The important point to take away from this is that there was no deliberate attempt by the Office of the President, as is being wrongly claimed, to exclude from the Press Conference any one of the media recognised on the Presidential Press Corp.

Let me conclude by quoting Edward Layne, speaking on behalf of the Office of the President. “President Ali and his government have always been and continue to be open and accessible to the media, and, by extension, every citizen of this country, and we have no intentions of retreating from these long-held principles of transparency and accountability that have defined successive PPP/C administrations.”

Yours sincerely,
Kit Nascimento