BCJ Urged to Maintain a High Standard of Content Monitoring

Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, Skills, Youth and Information, Dr. Kasan Troupe, has charged the Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica (BCJ) to maintain a high standard of content monitoring for the advancement of the nation.

An independent statutory agency under the Ministry, the BCJ is charged with monitoring and regulating the electronic media sector (free-to-air television, broadcast radio, and subscriber/cable television) to ensure it operates within appropriate programming, technical, and service standards.

Speaking to JIS News at the BCJ’s 40th anniversary conference held at the AC Hotel Kingston on Thursday (June 25), Dr. Troupe commended the agency for safeguarding standards and ensuring that citizens, particularly the youth, are receiving safe and clean content, by watching behind the scenes to eliminate excess vulgarity and violence.

“The BCJ is set up for a big reason and we are proud,” Dr. Troupe said.

“As we celebrate our conference this year, we’re looking to see how we can pivot and continue to respond to the need to educate our public about misinformation, disinformation and the risk of scams in the media,” she said.

She emphasised the Commission’s role in the nation’s transition from analogue to digital television, emphasising ongoing collaborative efforts to distribute set-top boxes, educate communities, and ensure equitable access to digital broadcasting services for all Jamaicans.

Executive Director of the BCJ, Cordell Green, said the conference is not only a commemoration of the BCJ’s 40 years of service but also a timely national conversation about the future of Jamaica’s media and communication landscape.

He said it has been phenomenal to see the evolution of technology over the four decades and the extent to which the world has been transformed through artificial intelligence (AI), particularly over the last two to three years.

Mr. Green said he is excited about the prospects for young people and urged them, as they seek to capitalise on the opportunities, to “remember, we are anthropomorphising devices, smart devices. Do not allow yourselves to function inferior to any machine or any device. Innately, we are very powerful people, so let us continue being human-centric. Use these devices ethically”.

“AI is not about doing more with less; it’s about doing more for more people. I hope young people will use AI in that way to do more for themselves, more for their communities, and ultimately more for Jamaica, and that they will also recognise that we have a tremendous gift in free-to-air and over-the-air radio and television,” he said.

The conference, under the theme ‘Legacy. Transformation. Future’, examined the future of media, broadcasting, artificial intelligence, digital transformation, trust, radio, youth engagement and media regulation.