We had high hopes in April 2011 when Cayman Islands Premier
McKeeva Bush first announced that his administration planned to start a
government- run television channel.
However, like many things in Cayman, hopeful beginnings
appear to have fallen quite a bit short.
It does appear that one positive result from this channel
will be the live broadcast of the Legislative Assembly proceedings. As we said
in April 2011, this is a tremendous public service the government could provide
people who may not be able to come to the legislature themselves. We’re not
sure why no mention has been made of expanding this idea to other
government-appointed boards and commissions that should, in our view, occur
before the public eye – including assembly committees and subcommittees.
At least in the early stages, it appears some $400,000 in
taxpayer funds may be spent in this operation that will include broadcasts of
things other than Legislative Assembly meetings. Premier Bush has said this
programming could include statements from ministers, government informational
programmes and religious programming.
With government’s budget at such a state as it is now, we
wonder about the wisdom of spending $400,000 or more to do this. That amount
surely will not be enough to accomplish everything the government wants.
Indeed, it is uncertain at this writing as whether any of the three staff
positions set out in the channel’s budget can be funded.
Moreover, the apparent urgency of having such a channel at a
time of budget cutbacks and austerity begs the question – just what will be the
rules for use of this TV signal eight months before an election?
We repeat what we said in our April 2011 editorial: “If the
government were to use [the channel] mainly as a propaganda tool, the many
potential positives of [the channel] will fall away. It would be one thing for
a political party to privately pay for its own television station, but quite
another for the sitting government to use taxpayers’ dollars to fund propaganda
TV, the type of which can be found in non-democratic oligarchies and
autocracies elsewhere in the world.”
We are concerned about this potential outcome.
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