Tit for Tat

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Apr 16, CMC – Attorney General Anand Ramlogan has accused the Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago (MATT) of being “selective in its criticisms” after the media group had earlier condemned what it termed “a virulent attack” on a journalist by the coalition People’s Partnership government’s chief legal advisor.

Ramlogan had during a television broadcast warned that the government would not remain “deaf and mute to political conspiracies that are being hatched within media institutions”.

But in an immediate response, MATT said “it is duty of the media to report fairly and fearlessly on matters of public importance. In that context the Attorney General’s focus on how the information came into the journalist’s possession and less so on the content is striking”.

At the center of the war of words is Ramlogan’s questioning how investigative journalist Anika Gumbs and the public relations officer of the main opposition People’s National Movement (PNM) Faris Al-Rawi had been able to obtain two confidential reports on the alleged new flying squad ahead of the government.

The reports were the results of investigations carried out by the police and the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) into the flying squad that a former senior police officer said he had been asked to re-establish by the then minister of national security, Austin “Jack’ Warner.

The report formed the basis of a front page story by the Sunday Express newspaper written by Gumbs.
But Ramlogan told viewers that the confidential report had been given to “a particular reporter who “continues to lick up the Government in the Express”.