A woman I greatly admired has died. Goodbye!

Jul 23, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Life is strange. The same day one of the greatest journalists journalism ever produced, died, the Stabroek News carried an editorial on journalism that was untypical of the newspaper and may have vindicated me in my early disagreement with the Stabroek News’s leadership in the early nineties.
With the birth of a private newspaper after the demise of the Burnham administration, my expectation was that Guyana needed the type of journalism and column-writing Helen Thomas pioneered. But I lost out in trying to bring that style to SN. Now read SN’s editorial.
Helen Thomas died last Saturday, the very day SN defended a sensitive, journalistic piece in the American magazine, Rolling Stone, that no one in this country would ever believe SN is capable of accepting. Helen Thomas was an extraordinary journalist/columnist
SN came out on the side of Rolling Stone which is caught in the moment in the US in a tempestuous controversy. The magazine’s main feature in its current issue is on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the teen charged with the Boston terrorist bombing. It is accompanied with a front page photo of the accused with his baby face and long hair.
The reaction was hysterical in some quarters and Rolling Stone has been accused of horrible insensitivities and journalistic madness. Rolling Stone responded with the theory that journalism cannot be invested with personal judgements and personal values. It went on to add that the piece is a scholarly investigation into the hidden dimensions of terrorism and the incredible places it can show up on US soil. In other words, the media house was saying that it was doing what journalism should do – tell it as it is.
The SN defended that approach to journalism. But there is a gargantuan BUT – would SN venture in Guyana along the path of Rolling Stone? It has not and will not. And we need that genre of journalism in Guyana. This was the background of my 1994 break with SN and even though I have had my problems with Kaieteur News, that Rolling Stone perspective was more appreciated in my columns by Kaieteur News than SN.
It was emotionally satisfying to see that SN emboldened itself by defending a journalistic style that is inherent in journalism. But the paper’s founders were millions of miles away from that direction when I was its weekly columnist.
Historian Anna Benjamin published a history of SN, and out of 29 persons interviewed, many of whom had thin connections with SN, I was not even asked for a sentence. I thought my columns from 1988 to 1994 enjoyed substantial marketability. One must remember a historian is expected to give the whole picture.
Last Friday a Guyanese academic in the presence of Dr. David Hinds and others told me that a race should write its own history if the truths of one’s race are to come out. I disagreed.
After the meeting I told promising, young activist Norville Hinds that Africans, White people, East Indians writing their own history respectively may end up hiding the truths. Embellishments based on fiction may very well be included.
Can a race write about its own historical evolution and admit its historical wrongs? Can we expect the truths in a biography of Mahatma Gandhi by Indian scholars? What about Guyanese East Indians writing the history of their evolution in this land? Can we expect embellishment or the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Hasn’t Burnham’s legacy created a division among African scholars?
As a trained historian, I am contemptuous of Afro-centric, Euro-centric and other centric approaches to writing about the origins and contours of civilization. For me all of these centrics are historically weak
Back to HelenThomas. She will remain for me one of the greatest, crusading journalists that ever picked up a pen. I was in Grenada when President Reagan invaded the island and she stood tall in front of Reagan in the White House press lounge and pointedly asked him why he wanted to do such an unnecessary act. She was brave, indefatigable and irritatingly the editor’s journalist that he could do without. But no editor could do without her because she was everything a journalist should be, everything a columnist should be.
As a practising columnist since 1988, I say most unambiguously that the world of columnists has lost a dear colleague. She died in her early nineties and no doubt lived a good and rewarding life. I call upon all media houses in this country to hold a special event for one of the most admirable media workers that ever graced the profession. Goodbye Helen, you did influence global journalism. Goodbye forever!

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