Opposition Leader Ralph Gonsalves used his “Morning Comrade” programme on Monday to criticise iWitness News, questioning the outlet’s professionalism and Kenton X. Chance’s dual role as a diplomat and media owner.
Chance, who founded iWitness News in 2009 while a student in Taiwan, was appointed the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ambassador to Taiwan, effective March 1.
Gonsalves’ comments came as he spoke about what he described as a campaign to “bully” Nadia Slater, acting director of the state-owned Agency for Public Information (API), over an April 28 notice to the media in which she incorrectly referred to him as prime minister.
API issued a release about a government press conference in which Gonsalves was named as the prime minister, five months after the New Democratic Party’s Godwin Friday succeeded him in that role.
He described it as“an innocent inadvertent error”, adding, “Well, clearly, this is not… an error which you must hang somebody for.”
The API sent a second email in which Slater said the agency had made a “genuine error with malicious intent” by referring to Gonsalves as prime minister.
iWitness News was among the media houses that reported on the development, and this publication later reported that Slater was sent on leave following the “comedy of errors”.
Gonsalves told listeners that instead of treating the matter as a minor clerical issue, political and media actors were using it to attack Slater.
“Well, clearly, this is not an error, which you must hang somebody for. They say it’s an innocent mistake,” Gonsalves said.
He pointed to instances in which Deputy Prime Minister St. Clair Leacock and Education Minister Phillip Jackson referred to him as “prime minister” after he was voted out of office.
“So, what you’re going to do, you won’t take it out on Leacock because he called me prime minister twice in Parliament. You going take it out on Philip Jackson because he called me prime minister?” Gonsalves said.
He said people were still referring to Sir James Mitchell as prime minister after he demitted office in October 2000, after 16 and a half years, and was succeeded by Arnhim Eustace.
“It’s not something that you should turn into a matter bigger than it is. The politicians ah dem hounding Nadia. … I seeing iWitness News wanting to tie her up, tar and feather her…
“… clearly they were so discombobulated at API, they sent out something which says that it’s an innocent error without malice, but they didn’t put ‘without’, they put ‘with’.
“But it can’t be an innocent error — I mean, an inadvertent error with malice. It’s clear that’s a typographical mistake, but they’re just stringing it up.”
The iWitness News article cited an unnamed source familiar with the matter as saying that it was unbelievable that the 5-month-old NDP government had kept Slater at the helm of the API for so long.
“It is not just that she campaigned openly for the Unity Labour Party during the 2025 election. Her actions after the election showed a particular disdain for the new government, even as she was head of the agency responsible for portraying the government in a positive light,” said the source, who asked for anonymity to speak freely to the media without authorisation.
The source quoted by iWitness News noted the Unity Labour Party (ULP) government’s attitude to Slater, despite her strong support for the party.
“… the ULP government skipped over Nadia three times, bringing in people from outside to head API rather than make her the director,” iWitness News quoted the source as saying.
In his show on Star Radio, the ULP’s radio station on Monday, the opposition leader said Chance is “the owner, and he heads the administration of iWitness News” and questioned whether his involvement goes beyond that, even as he is serving as a diplomat.
“I do not know if he’s still writing and running iWitness News. If he’s doing that, it’s not proper. He’s a diplomat for the country.
“You know, strange thing is that he’s one of the better diplomatic appointments that the government has probably made. I have nothing against this young man…”
However, Gonsalves immediately restated his concern that a sitting diplomat might be controlling what he presented as a politically active news outlet from abroad.
“…but if he’s running the paper from Taiwan, his iWitness News is not proper, because when you read iWitness News, it is … it has become part of the state media, the NDP state media, very partisan,” said Gonsalves who had repeatedly criticised iWitness News for its reporting long before Chance’s diplomatic appointment.
“… when you read iWitness News, it has become part of the state media, the NDP state media, very partisan. And, shortly, people will be calling it — if it continues like this, people will call it ‘Lie Witness News’, not iWitness News,” he said.
During the campaign for the 2020 general election, a ULP activist studying in Taiwan coined or popularised “Lie Witness News” to mock iWitness News’ reporting.
Gonsalves said iWitness News has “highly partisan columnists; they writing news stories as they were, editorials with all kind of jaundiced opinions. I mean, it’s terrible. It’s lacking professionalism,” Gonsalves said.
“But fundamentally, that is what is leading the charge to see if they can tie up Nadia Slater, a woman of quality; come from a progressive family down in Clare Valley, a good daughter of Clare Valley.
“Want to tar and feather her. Leh we go past that nuh, okay, so she made an error. It’s an innocent error. It’s made without malice. You just every day on it and trying to torment the young lady.”
Chance and Slater share a long history as primary school classmates in Clare Valley before becoming media colleagues.
Gonsalves said:
“And that torment, or attempted tormenting, is buttressed by NDP politicians. Stop it, man, stop it. This is a kind of unacceptable bullying; completely unacceptable. They’re getting on as they have anything better to do. I’m talking about the politicians them.”
Chance is on public record repeatedly commenting on the operations of the API, dating back to 2010. In recent years, he had noted that API had apparently switched to competing rather than collaborating with private media and branding its content as “superior journalism”.
Even Gonsalves had expressed frustration when he was the prime minister about the functioning of the state-owned agency.
Meanwhile, in other news, Slater was attacked and injured, allegedly by a relative, at her home around 3 a.m. Tuesday.
Police have taken a suspect into custody and Slater and her aunt, who is said to be in 70s, were taken to hospital for medical attention.
