Media houses must make information easily accessible
Mon, 07/04/2016 - 12:00am
Traditional media houses are making themselves “more and more obsolete,” each day.
This was the strong view of Assistant General Secretary of the Democratic Labour Party Senator Andre Worrell, who said that by information not being readily accessible at any time, the public was being disadvantaged.
“When it comes to accessing the news, the listener is not in control and the broadcaster seems to be the one calling the shots. By this I mean that if the news is at 12:30 p.m. or 1p.m., and you want to hear, you better be a slave to your radio or your television. Hardly can you go online to a website and capture that information at your convenience in a timely fashion. However, online, the new media such as Barbados Today, Loop news and so forth they are making use of these online publications so that you can watch the news at your convenience at any time and they give you news features online at any time of the day, but if you miss something on the established news networks, well I am sorry for you, you either have to wait until early 4:30 and hope that they repeat it, but oftentimes there is not a readily accessible online domain that you can go to,” he explained.
Speaking at Friday’s lunchtime lecture at the Errol Barrow Gallery at the DLP’s George Street headquarters, the Senator also insisted that it was time that the House of Assembly utilized such tools, contending that Parliamentary debates in both the Upper and Lower Chambers should be made available on its website so that Barbadians could be educated at their leisure.
“We have to recognize that our news in Barbados is not just for the 270,000 persons who live here and can easily buy a paper or tune in, but we have a large diaspora and visitors and investors who would want to know what is going on. The world is our oyster, so we need to make that information accessible,” Worrell insisted. (JMB)