Freedom of speech may be in jeopardy in The Bahamas, as attempts to cancel US Ambassador J Richard Blankenship’s recent appearance on the radio may have been politically motivated.<\/p>\n
\nThough the cancellation order came from ZNS General Manager Edwin Lightbourn, sources are indicating that it originated far higher up the “hierarchy” and is believed to have been politically inspired.<\/p>\n
\nSteve McKinney, host of the show which featured Mr. Blankenship last Tuesday, said that he had received a last minute letter from the ZNS General Manager cancelling the show because there were concerns that the show was live and “they were not sure what the Ambassador would say.”<\/p>\n
\nShortly after receiving a call from the US Embassy ,requesting a reason for the cancellation, Mr. McKinny called back the Embassy to inform the Ambassador the the “show will go on.”<\/p>\n
\nThis occurred after Mr. McKinney himself received a call from an “undisclosed source” inquiring as to the reason for the cancellation and informing him that the show will not be cancelled.<\/p>\n
\nDespite denials stating otherwise, it is widely believed that Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell intervened to quash the cancellation order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Blankenship: attempt to cancel show “like censorship.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}