WILLEMSTAD, Curacao (CMC) — Journalists, media professionals and academic from across the Caribbean yesterday — On World Press Freedom Day — began to examine what they see as a gathering storm threatening regional press freedom and a few gaps of sunshine in changing laws, attitudes and practices.

“Our journalists are not killed (in the Caribbean) but many stories die,” said Wesley Gibbings, president of the Association of Caribbean Media Workers (ACM) at the annual Caribbean Media Summit, sponsored by the United Nations cultural agency (UNESCO).

The conference began its focus on the challenges to safe reporting and free expression as the worldwide observance of press freedom was marked by the theme, “Safe to Speak: Securing Freedom of Expression in All Media”.

“Do we desire more voices or the encroaching silence of just a few?” Gibbings queried, as the discussion opened on such “real applications” as criminal defamation and the “existence of impunity” in the Caribbean.

“Are the systems… for the award of broadcast licences opening the doors or are they shutting the doors in our faces?

“Are our laws criminalising creative expression or are they opening the apertures and exposing the leaks? Is our work now safer for journalists than it used to be? If not, what are the early dangers?” asked Gibbings.

But as speeches and panel discussions began, journalists pointed to examples of where journalists have been the target of threats by political figures and supporters.

Jenni Campbell, the head of the Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ), spoke of having private security guards at her home after receiving personal threats while covering election campaigns, and other journalists have been singled out for threats for even fact- checking speeches.

“As the trend stands now… it will be only a matter of time before these thugs (think) that only threatening journalists is not enough,” Campbell declared, calling on the conference to take a public stance against a growing threat against press freedom in the Caribbean.

In her keynote address, Alison Bethel McKenzie, the head of the International Press Institute (IPI), painted a picture of the “callous, sustained” murder of 19 journalists so far this year in Haiti, Mexico, Honduras, Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador.

But the IPI head said there was cause for hope in the fight for press freedom, as Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Antigua and Barbuda appear set to decriminalise defamation as they reform their criminal codes.

Earlier this week, Trinidadian Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar kept her commitment made when her country hosted the IPI World Congress last year, to repeal a 168-year-old part of the country’s criminal code that would sentence a journalist to one-year jail sentence and a fine.

“It is a significant step,” McKenzie said.

But she added that the IPI had no faith in the assurances of other regional governments that they would not prosecute journalists while not abolishing criminal defamation.

The premier media training organisation in the English-speaking Caribbean also issued a call for media owners and managers to prepare for the “very real threats” to the safety of reporters.

“We must demand of our employers the adequate preparation that is necessary,” said Professor Hopeton Dunn, the director of the University of the West Indies’ Caribbean Institute for Media and Communication.

“We should pay attention to the occupational health and safety of our journalists,” Dunn said, calling for life and personal injury insurance and appropriate attire for journalists in crisis situations.

But journalists here also sought to broaden their idea of threats to safer reporting with the economic pressures the region’s media houses face. Others spoke of how the reporting of government corruption is perceived as a “crime”, prompting verbal abuse by politicians.

“It is the killing of the story. It is the killing of the career” of the journalist in some cases by politicians, said Guyanese journalist, Enrico Woolford, accusing them of hypocrisy while preaching “freedom with responsibility”.

Woolford and fellow Guyanese publisher Glen Lall have brought to the summit their protest against the manner in which their government has sought to award broadcast licences in the breakup of the state monopoly on radio broadcasting.

In a flyer titled “The Great Airwaves Heist of Guyana”, Woolford urged summit attendees to join in condemning the “blatant theft of 22 radio frequencies [awarded] to family, friends and party comrades of the governing PPP regime in Guyana.

“They were secretly told to apply even before the Parliament passed laws governing broadcasting in 2011,” Woolford said in the flyer, accusing the Donald Ramotar Administration of being involved in “insider trading” in Guyana.

In a one-man silent protest, Lall held up a large sign at the entrance of the conference which read “Press Freedom Threatened in Guyana as radio/cable licences are given to a select few”.