“Importance of independent media bigger than ever on St. Maarten”

Video by Laura Bijnsdorp
“The Dutch government and other organizations assist in the reconstruction of the affected islands, but local media are not part of this support program. Therefore, they depend on private initiatives such as the benefit event that was held Thursday in Nieuwspoort, The Hague.

“We’re going to send knowledge to St. Maarten, not a bag of money”

“Sponsorship, donations and ticket sales have so far delivered almost 27.000 US dollars, but we’re not going to send a bag of money tot St. Maarten, that would be a strange thing to do”, says event spokesman Jan-Willem Wits.

“We asked the local media what is needed and they asked for more knowledge and expertise on a level. So we will also provide training, marketing layouts, workshops and send specialists over.”

Watchdog journalism
Both St. Maarten chief editors Haar and De Windt agree that there is a lack of investigative journalism on the island. “We need more qualified journalists on the island, that are really capable of writing in-depth news stories”, expressed Haar. He adds: “without this, the media cannot function as an effective mechanism to enforce government accountability.”

Afraid of media
Another issue that all media has encountered for many years is the lack of willingness of those on Sint Maarten to speak to journalists on the record. Radio host of PJD2 Radio ,Grace BlijdenBlijden, is confronted with this daily: “People seem afraid to speak their minds, because they are afraid of the consequences.”

“It is a small community, which makes it hard to research and report certain news-items. No one wants to step on their neighbors toes.” Steve Cyrillien, who is in charge of gathering news for PJD2 Radio concludes.

Source: Caribisch Netwerk | 10 november 2017 | Laura Bijnsdorp and Natasja Gibbs