-Director of Center for Media Integrity of the Americas tells CBU conference
Governments should not expect journalists to seek permission before asking difficult questions and their commitment to press freedom should be judged by how they treat reporters who challenge them, Director of the Center for Media Integrity of the Americas, Ambassador John Feeley, said last evening.
Feeley delivered the warning at the opening of the Caribbean Broadcasting Union’s 57th Annual General Assembly and 37th CBU Media Awards at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, Liliendaal, where veteran Belizean journalist Jules Vasquez received the inaugural CMIA-CBU Caribbean Defender of Media Freedom Award.
The late Guyanese journalist Rickey Singh and the late Jamaican media and communications academic Professor Aggrey Brown were also inducted into the CBU Media Hall of Fame.
“We believe that journalists should never be required to ask permission for asking difficult questions. And governments should not expect that,” Feeley told the gathering, which included President Irfaan Ali, Prime Minister Mark Phillips, ministers, diplomats and regional media executives,
Feeley said the right to report freely was not a privilege granted by those in authority but a necessary condition of democracy.
“Perhaps the best test of a government’s commitment to freedom of expression is not how it treats journalists who praise it; it is how it treats those journalists who might challenge it,” he said.
That distinction mattered, Feeley added, because press freedom was not intended to protect governments or diplomats from embarrassment.
“It is designed to protect citizens from the consequences of a government without scrutiny,” he said.
Feeley described a responsible and independent press as one of democracy’s most important safeguards. While the media could be irritating, persistent and sometimes wrong, he said, its errors had to be corrected.
“But that is not a defect of democracy. That is democracy,” he declared.
He warned that attempts to silence journalists could take the form of lawsuits, restricted access, political attacks, commercial pressure and the withdrawal of government advertising. Such tactics, he said, were not confined to a particular country, political party or ideology.
Feeley also criticised the present direction of the United States, saying that its longstanding tradition of defending a free press had been broken and that the administration was openly demonising journalists and seeking reprisals against critics.
He said smaller states, including those in the Caribbean, had an important role in defending principles which larger and more powerful countries might abandon.
“Press freedom still matters. Laws matter. Professional standards matter,” he said.
Vasquez honoured
Announcing Vasquez as the first recipient of the media freedom award, Feeley said the 7News Belize News Director had spent more than three decades asking questions which persons in government, business and other centres of power would prefer not to answer.
Feeley said Vasquez had endured personal attacks and legal and economic pressure but continued to insist on the public’s right to know.
“That is what courage in journalism looks like,” he said. “Courage doesn’t mean that a journalist is never afraid. It means that fear is not determinative.”
Quoting Vasquez’s description of journalism, Feeley said: “Our job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
Democracy, he said, required both a voice for persons without power and someone willing to “knock on the door” of those who possessed it.
“In such an environment, the answer cannot be less journalism. The answer must be better journalism,” Feeley said, noting the spread of disinformation and the economic pressures facing traditional media.
He said a journalist’s ultimate loyalty could not be to a government, political party, commercial interest or the popularity of a newsroom.
“It must be to the public’s right to know,” he said.
Newsroom closures a warning
Meantime, CBU President Anthony Greene, warned that artificial intelligence could not secure the future of Caribbean media in the absence of viable news organisations.
“How do we build Caribbean media that are not only innovative, but viable?” Greene asked. “For all the promise of new technology, no tool can substitute for a sustainable business model.”
He said the closure or discontinuation of established Caribbean media services over the last year should be treated as a sobering signal.
“Behind every closed newsroom or discontinued service are lost jobs, diminished institutional memory, fewer opportunities for young professionals, and one less independent Caribbean voice in the public square,” Greene said.
Greene mentioned the Stabroek News of Guyana and Newsday of Trinidad among the recently closed media houses in the Caribbean.
Media viability, he argued, was not merely a commercial matter but a public-interest concern affecting citizens’ access to reliable information, the scrutiny of those in authority and the region’s ability to tell its stories in its own voice.
He said viability depended on sound revenue models, audience trust, access to technology, an enabling policy environment, journalist safety and the ability of media organisations to withstand disasters and other disruptions.
Greene announced that the union was preparing a CBU Media Industry Overview to provide an evidence-based assessment of the sector across its 18 member countries and territories. The study will examine media viability, access to information, journalist safety, training, digital transition and the resilience of communication systems.
The initial publication, coordinated by immediate past CBU president Dr Claire Grant, is expected during the first quarter of 2027.
“We need this document because conviction is not the same as evidence,” Greene said.
He reported that the 37th CBU Media Awards attracted a record 684 entries, an increase of more than 25% over the previous year. Categories for students of media and communication were also introduced for the first time.
The rules were amended to require disclosure and impose limits on the use of AI-generated material.
Greene cautioned against viewing artificial intelligence as either a miracle or a menace.
“AI is a tool. The real issue is how we use it, whose interests it serves, and whether it strengthens or weakens the trust that our audiences place in us,” he said.
‘Trust is working capital’
UNESCO’s Caribbean representative Eric Falt said artificial intelligence could assist small newsrooms with translation, data analysis, accessibility and the preservation of archives, but could also manufacture evidence, reproduce discrimination and overwhelm audiences with apparently authoritative falsehoods.
“The technology is powerful, but it is not wise. It has no conscience, duty of care or commitment to the public interest,” Falt said. “Those responsibilities remain ours.”
He described trust as “the working capital of journalism” and warned that a machine could not replace a reporter who understood why a rising river mattered to a community or an editor who decided that accuracy was more important than being first.
“Journalism is not merely the production of content. It is a relationship of responsibility between the media and the public,” he said.
Falt also raised the economic implications of AI systems extracting, summarising and reusing original journalism without meaningful attribution, consent or compensation.
“If the reporting disappears, an AI platform will not send a journalist to a flooded village. An AI system will not sit through a parliamentary committee, examine a procurement file, or ask why a promised school was not completed,” he said.
Media viability was therefore a democratic concern and not simply a business issue, he added.
Falt said the region’s relatively small markets did not diminish the rights of its journalists and called for the protection of Caribbean languages, archives and intellectual property in global discussions about AI.
“The markets in the region may be small, but the rights of journalists are not smaller,” he said.
Human-centred media
President Ali, who delivered the feature address, called for a human-centred approach to artificial intelligence, saying that machines could assist journalists but should not be permitted to replace editorial judgment.
“Journalism is not merely the processing of information. It is the interpretation of human experience,” Ali said.
He argued that a journalist did more than arrange words, since reporting required listening, observation, relationships and an understanding of tone, emotion and culture.
“A good journalist should know when a grieving mother needs silence rather than another question. A journalist knows when a politician is avoiding a question,” he said.
Ali added, however, that politicians could also recognise when journalists were compromised, saying the requirement for responsibility and balance operated both ways.
“Use AI, certainly,” he said, listing transcription, translation, database searches and data analysis among its possible newsroom applications. “But never allow the technology to become the journalist.”
The President identified four major challenges facing Caribbean media: economic sustainability, the fragmentation and migration of audiences, misinformation and declining trust, and the pace of technological transformation.
He said advertising revenue was increasingly being diverted from regional media houses to global technology platforms, while the costs of cameras, transmission, training and investigative journalism remained with local organisations.
“This requires a new economic model,” Ali said.
He also warned that Caribbean broadcasters were competing with content from across the world for the attention of young audiences. Regional media, he said, had to adapt their delivery without simply imitating global platforms.
“The answer to globalisation is not cultural isolation. It is cultural confidence,” he said.
Ali urged regional broadcasters to use international platforms to distribute Caribbean content and protect the region’s identity.
“We should not fear technology. We should master it,” he said. “We should not reject AI. We should understand it, regulate it wisely and use it intelligently.”
The decisions taken by the assembly, Ali said, could determine the character of regional broadcasting for decades and answer the continuing question of who tells the Caribbean story—and who controls the means by which Caribbean people receive it.
Discussion