Darrell Bradley Discusses Fake News and Media Ethics

Darrell Bradley

Attorney Darrell Bradley was a presenter during this morning’s engagement.  The former Belize City mayor discussed the rise of electronic media platforms, including podcasts and fake news, as well as political attacks on the media in the existing landscape.

Darrell Bradley, Attorney-at-law

“One of the things that was mentioned in the exchange with the media was the extent to which the media itself has changed.  Now, originally, we had print media, now we have electronic media and there are all different podcasts and all different forms of media.  How do we make sure that we protect all of those?  We can have legitimate media also, like Channel Five, Channel Seven, Krem and so forth, but what about the crackpots out there who just want to have like a podcast and do all different kinds of things.  You also have this thing which I think is very, very dangerous which has been sprouted in terms of the fake news and attacking the media, even from a political perspective.  So, you can have, and I said this in the presentation, I believe in Belize, but this may be a different experience, that we don’t really have direct attacks.  Nobody is killing journalists in Belize to the extent that we see in other countries, but there are really strong and powerful ways that the governmental structures can undermine the media, in terms of financially, by withdrawing public ads or those kinds of things, in terms of withdrawing interviews.  So we need to look at those ways and develop laws that curtail those and we also need to develop ethical practices and conventions within our democratic structure that really frowned on those areas where the politician and the governmental authorities are trying to limit access to the media to information.”