Harold Hoyte, Contributor

Hoyte

As we traverse the 21st century, I would suggest that there are possibly seven paramount international catalysts of which we should be aware.

Technology: The computer and how it has transformed the information age and how knowledge (concepts) have decreased the need for experience and reduced the capital factor in business. And how the increased value of knowledge-workers is revolutionising the old command-control method of managing the workforce. Later on we will look at the impact of technological changes on the media.

Geopolitics: The emergence of a single super-power (which happens to be our immediate neighbour) and whose President confuses global leadership with global dominance, hell-bent on re-making history and reshaping the world's geography according to current American obsessions.

Economics: First, there is the eco-politics of oil about which we are all very much aware. And there is the rise of the Asian economies with the fast-paced growth of China now becoming the second largest economy in the world, coupled with the burgeoning accomplishments of the India marketplace.

Ideology: Influence of the free market ideology on world events. The WTO and its potential to destroy the headway made by Third World countries in the last 30 years. The emergence of uneven beneficiaries, and a new dog-eat-dog dogma. Instead of its proclaimed culture of openness we see the WTO deepening cleavages between rich and poor nations.

HIV/AIDS: The frightening challenge of HIV/AIDS and its dire potential to rid Africa and the Caribbean of at least two generations of people in the prime of their lives, while orphaning a third generation.

Diversity: The stimulating challenge of managing multiformity. Demographers have predicted that in less than 20 years the majority population of the United Kingdom will be non-white. But this type of challenge exists not only to countries as a whole, but to communities, schools, workplaces and sports.

International terrorism: That is self-explanatory.

I turn now to our own region, the Caribbean.

Major challenges

A number of impediments could deny us full access to the rich opportunities of the century ahead. I count four major challenges in addition to the one which is the focus of my address - the challenge of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy(CSME).

Twin Risks: I think we should recognise our inadequacy, as a people, to successfully manage risks. I refer to two: Financial risks and life risks. First, on the one hand, the weaknesses of our currencies in times of great fluctuations; and on the other, the productivity battle to justify fixed exchange rates for economies pegged to the U.S. dollar; and life risks such as the long-term social and economic exposure we confront whenever we are threatened by natural disasters.

Uncontrollable violence: Widespread and senseless violence continues to erode our economic pillars, for nowhere in the Caribbean do we seem to have answers either to its escalation, or its primary source - the criminality of the illicit drugs trade.

Oil and water: I know that they do not mix, but I have brought them together because, particularly at this time, they will test our capacity to assert ourselves.

Access to affordable oil and availability of water are critical to our future development, especially of countries dependent on tourism. How high can oil prices climb before the tenuous tendrils of our socio-economic fabric disintegrate? Do we know, for instance, that collectively our Caribbean now ranks second to sub-Sahara Africa for water stress and water shortage?

Challenge No 4. Post-independence disillusionment: My generation was blessed with not just the greatness of the Bob Marleys and the Sir Gary Soberses of our time, but our consciousness was emboldened by the euphoria of political independence. Our younger follow-up generation, who have no enduring heroes, and who have no new socio-economic battles to engage, is drifting aimlessly without direction through an increasingly complex world.

They need the inspiration of a political model that is relevant and goes beyond what would just be the emotionalism of "independence" or "unity" and offers hope beyond "empty nationalism".

It is these factors which will impact greatly on how we journalists manage the new century which is upon us. They should not be far from our thoughts as we seek to manage the monumental symbol of the future - this new century.

The new millennium has ushered in a technological revolution which should be used by us to generate our own journalistic revolution, and thus secure our business success.

Be aware

We must be aware that the traditional methods of communication have changed and that we must remain relevant, whatever the medium, be it papers, palm pilots or phones.

We must evolve from where we are today to a framework of integrated processes for delivery of content to audiences where they want it, when they want it, and how they want it.

My friends in the electronic media tell me that digital technology has made delivery systems transparent, increasing opportunities for greater content distribution by way of more efficient use of bandwidth with lower power requirements.

We must convert to meet and exceed new expectations. Or expire.

Global changes which are impacting on our social and economic life in the region have hastened our movement towards the creation of a single Caribbean market and, possibly, a single economy.

We are doing this at a time when the world's super-power is focused on the Mideast, and when our traditional European alliances have moved on, leaving us in a virtual free enterprise limbo, an ant among elephants.

We are forced to redefine ourselves as one - a nation of Antilleans - not North American and not South American. And we seek urgently to be recognised.

The indissoluble fact is that 12 member states of CARICOM have established a single market. That union has implications for all of us who inhabit this sea and space, but more specifically it has implications also for those of us who work in the media.

We have all tried to pretend that we do not exist as a homogenous one, although that's how the world sees us.

We ignore the reality as our media houses really do not reflect the fact that decisions made in Port-of-Spain or Castries are ultimately going to be relative to what people do in St. John's or in Basseterre.

Let's be honest and admit that more time and more space are devoted to international developments than regional occurrences in all media houses in the Caribbean.

None of us spend more than token money to ensure that our people are on the cutting edge of breaking news. And at times we depend on international news sources like CNN to tell us what is happening right next door to us. And we publish and broadcast their versions without shame. We must shake off this lethargy and assert ourselves as the primary and predominant information engine. More on that later.

Our political leaders have given themselves a 2008 deadline to create a single economy in the Caribbean. If their goal is achieved, the role which we as communicators will play will become significantly important.

Responsibility

The professional class of Caribbean journalists will not be able to escape its responsibility in this new dynamic.

If we fail to do our job, major sections of our various societies will be entirely unaware and will remain unconvinced, and possibly opposed to regional economic integration. All the good work of our political leaders will be undermined and the fate of this region will be tragic indeed, in a world that is deliberately dividing itself into viable economic and trading groups and even sub-groups for negotiating clout.

We have the lesson of mid-20th Century's ill-fated West Indian Federation as a jarring reminder of our failed aspiration to group unity.

In 1957 a young Jamaican lawyer and trade unionist gave the reason why in an article in Public Opinion:

"If the electorate did not grasp the real issue, it was because both parties failed to put the important political concepts of federation and separatism before it."

The writer was one Michael Manley.

And another young lawyer, this one from Barbados, in giving a speech in Parliament shortly after the collapse of the Federation in 1962, said: "If they (the West Indian leaders) had done their job to educate the people of the West Indies in the exercise of a Federal Constitution, there would not be any need for my discourse this afternoon."

The words of one Errol Barrow.

Perhaps that point about informing and educating is more aptly put by calypsonian Black Stalin in Caribbean Man:

...Mister West Indian politician

I mean yuh went to big institution

And how come you can't unite 7 million

When ah West Indian unity, I know is very easy

If you only rap to yuh people and tell dem like me, dem is...

One race (de Caribbean man)

From de same place (de Caribbean man)

Dat make de same trip (de Caribbean man)

On de same ship (de Caribbean man)

So we must push one common intention

For we woman, and we children

Dat must be de ambition of de Caribbean Man

De Caribbean man, de Caribbean man.

The role of education applies in a specific way to the contemporary journalists who are now peeping into the century ahead.

It is a role which journalists of yore were rarely afforded.

It is therefore wise and timely to remember the vast transformation in the status and role of the media in the Caribbean over the past 50 years.

Let's take a brief journey: Ownership of the media, except for your own Gleaner newspaper resided in the hands of the British media conglomerates like Rediffusion of Carlton House, Regent Street and Lord Thomspon or Cecil King of Fleet Street.

Most journalists of that time were not free to write their points of view. Even so their orientation was not genuinely Caribbean. Their values were almost exclusively European, so what they chose to write and how they expressed it reflected their fervour for qualities defined by standards that were not native to the Caribbean. Local journalists existed to do the court and police reports which merely augmented a vast amount of foreign news. They operated according to the dictates of the owners (some say we still do!), and they did it so faithfully that those owners developed a healthy respect for spinelessness and heartily rewarded jelly-fish journalism.

Speech made at the 2006 Excellence in Media Awards. Next week: The role of the media.