Gleaner Enterprise Reporter Tyrone Reid (right) accepts his trophies for winning the top print prize for the series of stories 'The ammunition affair' at the Jamaica Broilers Fair Play Awards ceremony yesterday. Making the presentation is Broilers' President and Chief Executive Officer Robert Levy. - Contributed

The media in Jamaica were reminded of their responsibility to promote positive national development, even while being fêted at yesterday's Jamaica Broilers Group Fair Play Awards held at the Hilton Kingston hotel.

The yearly awards ceremony honours local journalists for outstanding work in the field of print and electronic reporting. Before the awards were handed out this year, guest speaker Dr Herbert Thompson, president of Northern Caribbean University (NCU), called on journalists to remain true, fair and vigilant.

"It is the balanced, fair-minded journalist who stands between the spirited presenter and the unsuspecting consumer. Journalism is not a fine art, its practitioners need not be experts at excessive colour, wild euphemisms or spin."

Thompson said that truth should not be sacrificed for anything, as journalists must be right "100 per cent of the time or close to it".

The NCU president called for the media to be a facility wherein a multiplicity of views could be aired. This, he said, is the litmus test of a true democracy.

Slander laws

Thompson urged Parliament to look at changing the libel and slander laws in the upcoming legislative year, saying that public officials should always be held accountable.

In 2007, Prime Minister Bruce Golding established a committee, under the chairmanship of Justice Hugh Small to review Jamaica's libel and slander laws. The committee submitted a report and the findings are before a parliamentary committee.

Five awards were handed out yesterday, with The Gleaner's Tyrone Reid, Phyllis Thomas and Daraine Luton grabbing awards.

Reid, the 2007 top print prize recipient, and editor Phyllis Thomas took home the top print prize for the series of stories 'The ammunition affair'.

The saga chronicled the sale of ammunition to the Jamaica Constabulary Force by Lance Brooks, owner and operator of Taylor and Associates - an arms-brokering business - in Lauderhill, Florida, between October 2007 and March 2008. Brooks is a confessed criminal and was not licensed to be exporting defence articles. Ingrid Brown of the Observer was second.

Luton received a certificate of commendation for his entry 'Bauxite's last days', which delved into the impact of the recession on Jamaica's bauxite industry.

CVM Television won the top award for the electronic category for its series 'In Arms Way'.