AS directors and shareholders of the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) were preparing last evening for a crucial meeting in Barbados today, strong calls for support to rescue the regional media institution were coming from various official and media quarters.

With the shocked immediate closure Friday for proposed “restructuring”, it means that subscribers will be deprived for an indefinite period of the print, radio and television news services normally provided by the CMC.

These include the daily Caribbean Today 15-minute newsreel that has been the flagship programme of CANA; the nightly CBU’s Caribbean News Line; Caribbean in Five morning programme for radio subscribers as well as the daily sports report.

Secretary-general of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Edwin Carrington, the Antigua and Barbuda diplomat, Ronald Sanders, as well as a number of senior media personnel were among those lamenting yesterday the suspension of the CMC’s services as they urged that all efforts be made to have the media institution back in business as soon as possible.

At the same time, some of the estimated 50 workers of the Barbados-headquartered media enterprise who went home depressed and angry over the dramatic suspension of their services, were yesterday seeking legal advice on the CMC’s financial obligations to them, including national insurance and pension benefits as well as payments in lieu of entitled vacation.

Obligations to workers and clients will be among the issues for consideration at today’s meeting of the CMC directors with chairman Lester Spaulding of Jamaica presiding.

They will have before them a copy of a statement issued yesterday by CARICOM’s secretary-general Carrington, who is also a Trustee of the Caribbean News Agency (CANA) that was merged some 17 months ago with the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) as the CMC to provide integrated wire, radio and television services. The Gleaner and Radio Jamaica Group were local shareholders of CANA before the merger.

CANA which, like CARICOM, LIAT and BWIA, has been in existence for some 25 years, has been promoting itself up to last week on the CMC’s web page as “only the sun covers the Caribbean better” than that news agency.

Now, like the 16 year-old CBU, it has fallen victim to a critical cash-flow problem and can only be resuscitated through a financially diverse rescue package

Carrington, pledging to be of help in whatever way possible, said:

“At a time when we need greater support from, and for the media as we build our Caribbean Community and CARICOM Single Market and Economy, and seek to secure a place for the community in the globalised international environment, to be without the services of such a critical institution as the CMC, is to make our task, which is already difficult, even more so…”

He expressed concern that the critical cause for the closure is lack of resources and wondered “if some more creativity in the management of the CMC is also not necessary”.

Carrington feels that he recognises his own obligation as a CANA Trustee but was disappointed to learn that with the “serious impending (closure) action of the CMC, the opportunity was not taken to at least inform the community to see if there is anything that could have been done to minimise the damage….”

In its statement on Friday, the CMC Board said the temporary closure was a painful decision and that help was sought, without success, from banks, shareholders and some governments in the region.

The Antigua and Barbuda high commissioner to London and one of the first directors of the CANA Board, Ronald Sanders, deemed the closure of the CMC as a “grievous blow to the free flow of information between Caribbean states” and a retrograde step to the past quarter century when this region had to rely solely on news about itself from agencies in London, Paris and Washington.

Sanders, who like the communications specialist Hugh Cholmonedley had played an important role in the launching of CANA, called on Caribbean governments to learn more about the closure of the CMC and to take steps to “ensure that it is reopened in an appropriate way as quickly as possible”, with ministers of information and the CARICOM Secretariat giving “urgent consideration to convening a meeting with the CMC’s board of directors.

Sentiments about the value to the Caribbean of the regional media institution also came from some of the former top management officials of CANA, among them its first chief editor, Hubert Williams of 10 years service; Harry Mayers, first general manager of 13 years, and Trevor Simpson, the immediate past general manager and former chief editor who like current chief editor, Trevor Yearwood, have been among the longest serving employees of the organisation.

Williams said news of the CMC’s closure “distresses me greatly. As far as I am concerned the CMC is to the Caribbean what Julie’N (a major national supermarket) is to Barbados. It cannot be allowed to fail. I feel every effort should be made at every level to resuscitate this very important regional institutition”.

For Harry Mayers, currently an editor of the Nation newspapers, the closure of the CMC “reflects a failure of the region to solve its identity problem and come to grips with the problem of meaningful integration. Today’s hurtful news contrasts with the optimism and promise of that period in our history a quarter of century ago when CANA was launched in the service of the region”.

Efforts to reach Ken Gordon, the Trinidad and Tobago media entrepreneur and first chairman of CANA was unsuccessful. But Trevor Simpson, in sharing the general sentiments of his CMC colleagues said:

“The closure would be a blow to the region’s integration movement if the CMC were allowed to disappear. I would hope that all avenues are seriously explored to ensure its survival.”

(Rickey Singh is the CMC’s regional affairs correspondent)