Media group condemns police raid

Sat, February 11, 2012 - 7:52 AM

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad – The Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago (MATT) yesterday “strongly condemned” the raid by police officers on the offices of the Newsday newspaper as well as interrogating a journalist over a story regarding the ongoing row between the chairman of the Integrity Commission Ken Gordon and his deputy Gladys Gaffor.

“This is a very scary development. I think the precedent has now been set that police officers willy nilly raid media houses. Yesterday’s development is very unfortunate. We in the Media Association is condemning it in the strongest possible terms,” MATT president Kerry Peters said.

“The reporter, Andre Bagoo as I understand was treated like a criminal, his computer and other personal effects were seized and his home searched before he was taken in for questioning.

“Something like that the association can only frown upon. It is the unrestrained and injudicious intimidation by the police despite calls in the past for them to desist from taking such action at media houses and against journalists,” Peters said.

Late last year, MATT as well as regional and international media organisations condemned the action by the police to raid the television station of the Caribbean Communications Network (CCN) after it broadcast a tape showing a young girl being sexually assaulted.

Newsday in a front page story Friday also “strongly condemned” the police action which it said was in a “bid to force senior investigative, political and parliamentary reporter Andre Bagoo to reveal the source of information about his exclusive story on a row between” Gordon and Gafoor.

“Newsday stands by Mr Bagoo’s right to refuse to reveal his sources under any circumstances. If this offends the Integrity Commission, under its present Chairman, (or any other chairman) to the extent where police raids are made on our newsroom and on the house of our reporter, so be it,” the paper’s chief executive officer and Editor in Chief, Therese Mills said in a statement defending Bagoo and all reporters’ rights to protect their sources.

“It is fundamental to the functioning of a journalist that she or he is able to protect sources of information. Without this, the work of the journalist, particularly the investigative journalist, is fatally impaired.”

Mills also noted the coincidence of the police searches and the suspension of Gafoor from the Integrity Commission on Thursday.

Newsday reported that the police, under the supervision of the head of the Anti-Corruption Investigations Bureau (ACIB) Senior Superintendent Solomon Koon Koon searched the newsroom for almost three hours as well as Bagoo’s home.

The newspaper said it viewed the “police action as intimidatory tactics to pressure Bagoo” recalling that on January 20, “the police wrote Bagoo asking him to disclose the source of his information about the story he wrote on Gordon’s row with Gafoor. Bagoo refused to reveal his sources”. (CMC)