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World Report - Jamaica

• Area: 10,991 sq. km.
• Population: 2,826,000
• Language: English
• Head of government: Bruce Golding, since September 2007

The Jamaican government consulted press representatives in 2008 with a view to developing press legislation but the legal reforms have yet to be seen.

It was the Prime Minister, Bruce Golding, who in January 2008 set up a think tank to examine the laws of Libel and Slander. President of the Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ), Desmond Richards, headed up the committee. Under Jamaican law, defamation offences are still punishable with prison sentences, although no longer applied in this type of case. Committee members have been compromised by the whiff of "corporatism" and one year after it was set up, the promised new legislation has not been forthcoming.

Jamaica has a very honourable record in freedom of expression and media safety, only slightly diminished by the occasional physical assault. In the space of one week in 2009, two journalists were victims of abuse of power on the part of Kingston police. Julian Richardson, a financial reporter on the daily Jamaica Observer, was threatened with death on 14 February after refusing to give way to a blackmail attempt by two officials. Six days later, Ricardo Makyn, a photographer on the daily The Gleaner, was arrested for "insult, assault and disobedience" to the security forces, after taking a photograph of a police officer who had just shot and injured a man who had tried to rob him of his mobile phone. A few isolated confrontations were reported during elections that brought Golding to power, in September 2007, between journalists and militants of the two main parties, the People's National Party (of former Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller) and Golding's Jamaica Labour Party.

Topics: Freedom of information, Freedom of expression,