Dear Editor,
The question should have been simple: “Which three relatively objective Guyanese news outlets should we allow in the group?”
Yet the responses from members of the Guyaspon Facebook community – a sprawling virtual village of Guyanese at home and abroad – read less like a list of news sources and more like a referendum on the state of the country’s democracy.
“None.” “None…..they are all biased.” “Most seem to be politically motivated.”
Where specific outlets were named, they were almost always contested: Stabroek News, Village Voice, News Room, News Source, HGP Nightly News, Gordon Moseley. One member suggested a podcast, “Without Fear or Favour”, as a rare attempt to feature “both sides”. Others responded to certain recommendations with ridicule – “this is high level comedy” – as if merely naming a news outlet was enough to place a person in a political camp.
This was not a scientific survey. But it is revealing. Guyaspon’s membership is drawn from across the world – North America, Europe, the Caribbean and Guyana itself – including citizens who now live in societies with a longer tradition of press freedom and more robust institutions. Yet when they look back at Guyana, many still cannot agree on even three “relatively objective” places to get news. The fourth estate has become so entangled with partisan contest that ordinary people, including the educated diaspora, no longer trust the idea of neutrality itself.
Part of the explanation lies in the well documented history of political pressure on the media. International observers and media freedom monitors have noted how successive governments have treated state media – NCN, the Guyana Chronicle and the Department of Public Information – as communication arms of the administration rather than as public service institutions. Editorial lines tend to mirror official talking points; dissenting voices are marginal; investigative work into the government’s own conduct is rare. This is not a uniquely Guyanese story, but in a small society the effects are magnified.
The Guyaspon thread is striking for what it does not contain: almost no one suggests the state outlets. They are not even debated. They are simply absent, treated by the group as extensions of party machinery rather than as contenders for “objective” news. That silence is itself a verdict – a quiet acknowledgement that state capture has hollowed out their credibility.
In the vacuum, the burden of public trust has shifted to the independent and quasi independent press. Stabroek News, over decades, has made its reputation by publishing uncomfortable truths for whichever party holds office. Its editorials have been sharply critical of both PPP and APNU AFC governments, and its reporters have often borne the brunt of political hostility for insisting on answers. Newer platforms such as News Room Guyana and News Source have tried to combine live coverage with more balanced reporting, giving space to government, opposition and civil society actors alike. Village Voice has emerged as a smaller, more combative outlet that foregrounds issues of governance, rights and accountability.
Yet even these names trigger suspicion in the Guyaspon debate. Supporters of one outlet deride readers of another. Recommendations are read less as judgements about journalistic practice – corrections policies, depth of reporting, separation of news and opinion – and more as declarations of political identity. If you cite Stabroek, you are assumed to be anti government; if you share a clip that appears on a station seen as close to the administration, you are accused of parroting propaganda.
The content is secondary; the perceived allegiance is primary.
This is how political pressure works long after the press release is sent. When governments systematically favour friendly outlets with advertising, access and information while freezing out critics, they do more than distort coverage in the short term. They train the public to see the media as an extension of political warfare. Over time, citizens stop looking for reporting that can be tested against evidence and start searching for coverage that confirms their side is winning. In such an environment, even a headline that is factually correct is judged first by whose narrative it appears to support.
The diaspora dimension makes this picture even more troubling. Many in Guyaspon live in countries where state run broadcasters are insulated by law from direct political control, where independent regulators oversee licensing, and where public trust is supported by clear professional standards. Yet when these same individuals engage with Guyanese news, they often bring home grown cynicism rather than imported norms of media literacy. The anger, the “None, they are all biased” responses, speak to a deeper frustration: people feel that the Guyanese media ecosystem gives them no place to stand that is not already claimed by a political tribe.
What, then, can be salvaged? The Guyaspon discussion suggests at least three points of consensus that could form the basis of a healthier conversation.
First, there is still an instinctive recognition that independence matters. The outlets most frequently put forward – Stabroek News, Kaieteur News, Village Voice, News Source – are privately owned and not formally tied to a party or the state. Whatever their perceived leanings, they represent a structural alternative to government communications channels. That is a foundation on which to build.
Second, there remains a public hunger for spaces that “present at least both sides”, as one commenter put it in recommending a podcast. That phrase – “both sides” – is not a call for false equivalence but a plea for forums where citizens can see their disagreements processed through argument and evidence rather than insult and innuendo. The fact that such a podcast stands out as an exception shows how rare that experience has become in the national information diet.
Third, there is a growing awareness, even among non journalists, of professional shortcomings: “Not simply biased, but inadequately prepared and professionally limited,” one participant observed. This is a harsh but important criticism. When newsrooms are under resourced, reporters poorly trained, and editors harried by political and commercial pressure, mistakes multiply and standards slip. The result is not only bias but mediocrity – and mediocrity, repeated, becomes another kind of propaganda.
If Guyana is serious about strengthening its democracy in the oil era, this culture of mutual distrust between citizens and the press cannot be left to fester. Governments must end the use of advertising and access as instruments of reward and punishment; state media must be re founded as genuine public service institutions with guaranteed editorial autonomy; and independent outlets must recommit to rigorous reporting, transparent corrections, and clear separation between news and opinion.
The Guyaspon thread is more than an online spat. It is a mirror. It shows a people scattered across continents, still bound to a homeland where partisan loyalty has eaten into the very idea of a common factual ground. When a diverse diaspora cannot name three “relatively objective” sources that everyone can live with, the problem is not their Facebook manners. It is the cumulative effect of decades of political pressure on the fourth estate.
Restoring credibility will require more than asking citizens which outlets they “like.” It will demand institutions that can earn respect across the divide – and a citizenry willing to judge those institutions not by which party they seem to favour today, but by how faithfully they pursue the harder task of truth.