Morris denies role in anti-PNM propaganda messages

Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­[email protected]

Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Nicholas Mor­ris has dis­missed as “fake,” screen­shots cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia which pur­port to show mes­sages call­ing on Gov­ern­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tions per­son­nel to co­or­di­nate on­line at­tacks against the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

The first screen­shot, at­trib­uted to Mor­ris, reads: “Every­one here is paid 20,000 plus to be a voice against the PNM. Find a pro­pa­gan­da an­gle and push it out.”

A sec­ond pur­port­ed mes­sage says: “Col­leagues who are un­afraid of the PNM, those who wish to un­der­take (sic) the Job the PM give them, please pro­ceed to cre­ate an is­sue from this ar­ti­cle. Those who wish to take Mr Young's feel­ings to play. Do as you wish.”

Nei­ther im­age con­tains a date or time­stamp and it is un­clear which ar­ti­cle is ref­er­enced in the sec­ond mes­sage.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Mor­ris, who im­me­di­ate­ly re­ject­ed any as­so­ci­a­tion with the screen­shots.

“That is not true,” he said.

Mor­ris said he has re­peat­ed­ly been the sub­ject of false claims on so­cial me­dia and de­scribed the screen­shots as an­oth­er at­tempt to tar­get him. He al­so de­nied any group chat ex­ist­ed to co­or­di­nate such ac­tiv­i­ties.

Short­ly af­ter the first ver­sion of this sto­ry was pub­lished on Guardian Me­dia’s web­site yes­ter­day morn­ing, an­oth­er screen­shot be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia, ap­pear­ing to show Mor­ris leav­ing a group chat.

How­ev­er, the pro­file pic­ture dis­played in that screen­shot dif­fered from the pro­file pic­ture shown in the ear­li­er screen­shots con­tain­ing the al­leged mes­sages.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands from mul­ti­ple sources, how­ev­er, that the group chats them­selves are le­git­i­mate and com­prise com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ists, com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cers and com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­agers em­ployed across var­i­ous gov­ern­ment min­istries.

The sources said the ref­er­ence to a $20,000 salary aligns with the salaries of some com­mu­ni­ca­tions per­son­nel.

The al­le­ga­tions come amid pre­vi­ous scruti­ny of the Gov­ern­ment’s use of com­mu­ni­ca­tions per­son­nel and so­cial me­dia.

In May, Guardian Me­dia re­vealed the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) had hired nine out of a pro­posed batch of 12 so­cial me­dia in­flu­encers, with com­bined month­ly salaries to­talling $85,398.92.

The in­flu­encers were among 416 peo­ple hired by the Au­thor­i­ty be­tween April 29 and No­vem­ber 30, 2025, short­ly af­ter the April 28 gen­er­al elec­tion.

In­formed sources told the Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk that 12 in­flu­encers were iden­ti­fied and nine were hired and placed un­der or­di­nary job ti­tles with salaries of up to $12,500 a month. They were as­signed to cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions roles to de­fend the Gov­ern­ment on­line and re­spond to crit­ics.

Sim­i­lar al­le­ga­tions sur­faced more than a decade ear­li­er.

In 2011, Cam­pus Chron­i­cle, a pub­li­ca­tion of Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Net­work, re­vealed an or­gan­i­sa­tion known as “tnt­good­blogs” was al­leged­ly pay­ing uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents to in­un­date news­pa­per web­sites and In­ter­net chat fo­rums with pro-gov­ern­ment sen­ti­ment.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­port­ed the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­cruit­ed stu­dents to post read­er com­ments be­neath sto­ries pub­lished by the Trinidad Guardian, Trinidad Ex­press and News­day prais­ing then Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and her gov­ern­ment while at­tack­ing the Op­po­si­tion and coun­ter­ing an­ti-gov­ern­ment opin­ions ex­pressed by oth­er com­menters.

Stu­dents who spoke to Cam­pus Chron­i­cle on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty said they were paid to au­thor com­ments or blogs at­tack­ing the Op­po­si­tion and were promised free Black­Ber­ry smart­phones with un­lim­it­ed in­ter­net ac­cess so they could con­tin­ue post­ing dur­ing class­es.