PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – Prominent Trinidad and Tobago journalist and communicator Jones P. Madeira died Friday at the Mount Hope Medical Complex, east of here, where he had been battling several “severe medical conditions.” He was 80 years old.
A statement from his family announcing the death said that he died at 3.33 pm (local time) and that he had been hospitalized since last week after ailing for some time.
His wife of 53 years, Melba, his daughters Melanie and Lorilee, and son Justin have expressed their gratitude to the hospital staff for their care and comfort during the last week of his life.
Madeira began his career as an amateur broadcaster with the Voice of Rediffusion, a wired radio channel of the Trinidad Broadcasting Company (TBC), which also operated the Radio Trinidad station. His first professional position in journalism was in the print media as a reporter with the Trinidad Publishing Company, publisher of the Guardian newspapers.
Madeira, inducted into the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) Caribbean Media Hall of Fame in 2000, entered broadcasting full-time as a News Editor/Reporter with the state-owned National Broadcasting Service. He received a fellowship from there and became a producer with the BBC’s Overseas Regional Services, broadcasting out of Bush House, London.
Madeira returned home and re-joined NBS 610 as Senior Producer, News and Current Affairs, and along with a team of young broadcasters, introduced and produced a range of news and current affairs initiatives.
In 1976, he moved on to the Adviser in Media Relations and Public Information position at the Guyana-based Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat. He was part of a UNESCO team headed by CBU founder Hugh Cholmondeley, who was responsible for promoting the Caribbean integration movement.
Their work included further developing the Caribbean News Agency (CANA) and the CBU and expanding the cooperation of electronic media houses in the Caribbean in program production and exchanges, engineering, and broadcast training. After five years in this position, Madeira assumed the position as the first full-time Secretary General of the CBU from 1981 to 1982.
After a short stint in the state sector, he re-entered mass media as head of News and Current Affairs of Trinidad and Tobago Television (TTT). He had his finest hour as a journalist when he turned his hostage condition, made so by Abu Bakr and his insurgents on July 27, 1990, into being a facilitator of communication between the Bakr insurgents and the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force (TTDF).
During his tenure at the TTT, he pioneered several major regional broadcast projects, including the CARIBVISION project, which undertook daily satellite exchanges among regional television systems, live productions of significant events in many Caribbean capitals, and the CARIBSCOPE Television Magazine, which became the prototype of a transcription television program exchange in the Caribbean.
Following TTT, he diversified his career by becoming Manager of News, Current Affairs, and Caribbean Relations at the Trinidad Broadcasting Company and editor-in-chief of the Trinidad Publishing Company Limited.
He resigned as editor-in-chief of the Guardian newspaper along with most of his Senior Editorial Team during a confrontation with the Basdeo Panday government and publishers over freedom of the press. He became one of the pioneers of a new but now defunct newspaper, the Independent.
He then moved into public health communication, serving as an Information Adviser at the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre (CAREC). After almost a decade in that position, he became Manager/Adviser of the Communication Unit of the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Health. Subsequently, he became Court Protocol and Information Manager of the Judiciary of Trinidad and Tobago.
In 2014, he assumed the post of Editor-in-Chief at Newsday’s daily newspaper.
“Through all of his journalistic positions, Jones worked with a few generations of experienced journalists and emerging reporters to keep Trinidad and Tobago and the region updated, informed, and advised on the issues of the day and how such matters impacted the lives of people,” the family statement said.
“As husband …and father…Jones Madeira performed his duties with love, affection, and devotion to his family. They, in turn, during the last few years of his life, affected by illness, returned that care and devotion that they shared over 11 years,” the statement added.
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