Ten days ago, government announced that it was suspending normal relations with Channel 5. The directive is that no government representative of any ministry or department should give any official individual interview or make any individual appearance on Channel 5.
Today the Prime Minister explained why his government took the decision and that it is willing to invite the Caribbean Broadcasting Union to mediate the dispute:…
PM Dean Barrow
"Channel 5 is not being lock out of any kind of public space that's control by the government. The Clark said to me this morning ' is Channel 5 allowed into the house?' absolutely. Their program that they use the Bliss Center for - nobody is going to deny them their access to the Bliss, in a context like this nobody is going to say I am not going to talk to the Channel 5 representatives but I do maintain that I will give no personal individual interview to Channel 5 and that is the position of all the ministers and I do maintain that members of the government are not to do it except in obvious circumstance, this is not black and white. Somebody ask me 'people can't talk to Channel 5 about the weather' that would be ridiculous but the bottom line is that I personally as all of you made myself very much available to the press, the last Prime Minister as far as I know didn't have a cell phone or if he had one nobody except his intimates knew the number. The world when we are talking about the press have my number, you call me, you text me, I always try to respond, so you know I am open to the press and I have nothing to hide, but Channel 5 has been terribly unfair, terribly unprofessional when it comes to the government. I don't care about their political agenda but in the same way as Belize Times and Vibes Radio don't see interviews with us, if Channel 5 will operate in the same way then they ought not to seek interviews with us and if they do we will not give those interviews. I had thought while Channel 5 clearly has an agenda that they would make some attempt to be reasonable balance where reporting on government news was concern, that was not the case and I really felt that this move was necessary to let the public know that Channel 5 can't have it both ways - it can't be operating under the guise of a professional independent news outfit when it is so clearly engaging in an absolutely bias agenda. Once that is out there we can go back to seeing how we can do business. The CBU in their statement said they would be happy to attempt some kind of mediation and if they can produce some kind of commitment on the part of Channel 5 to be reasonable fair while continuing to some extent with their political agenda, that is their right. If CBU can produce that we would be happy to go back t_o where we were before. In the meantime Channel 5 has a right to its political agenda, we have a right to our position."
PM Barrow also answered the much asked question of why the government did not take its grievances with Channel 5 to the Broadcasting Authority
PM Dean Barrow
"They must realize that we are adopting a far softer approach, if you complain to the Broadcasting Authority, you are asking for sanctions to be impose, the revocation of a license to be contemplated, that I will not do, I will never make that complaint because I don't not want to see Channel 5's license terminated. "
