The state media should not criticise

Aug 20, 2009 Editorial

One issue that will never go away is the debate about what is journalism. In most countries, news is about all the news that is fit to print. As a result, one would find some newspapers printing stories about the private lives of people, particularly those in the public view, such as politicians and movie stars.
They would more often than not print stories that the people in the news reports believe would not see the light of day. Just the other day reporters ferreted out the dealings of a governor in the United States. This governor had traveled to Argentina unknown to his wife for a fling.
The reporters got wind of the story and the rest is history. They also ferreted out the story of former President Bill Clinton and his intern Monica Lewinsky, as well as the senior officials who consorted with call girls either at their own expense or at the expense of the state. These stories hit the international media and even in Guyana the various newspapers picked up those reports.

There were no condemnations by anyone, but had some local media house done the same to a government official there would not have been no end to the reports in the state media. This would have become a political issue and there would have been accusations of people being anti-government.
We can safely arrive at this conclusion following observations by Dr Prem Misir when he commented on a column written by Freddie Kissoon in the Kaieteur News. Dr Misir contends that Freddie Kissoon only writes about a part of what occurs at the level of national development.
More recently, one could not help but notice the slew of letters attacking Freddie Kissoon, some of them blatantly ad hominen. There has been no letter supporting Mr Kissoon and no condemnation of the ad hominen attacks. As things stand, all of these letters were published in the state media.
No one can recall a letter critical of the government in the state media; and in cases where such letters are published in another section of the media the state media would publish the response without even mentioning the original letter.

But there is more to the decision by the state media to ignore anything negative. Recently, there were some interesting allegations stemming from the Robert Simels trial. Simels was at one time the lead lawyer for self-confessed drug trafficker Shaheed ‘Roger’ Khan.
During his trial there were accusations implicating a Minister of Government in some things. He also blamed the government of being complicit in the killing of a number of people.
Left to themselves, the state-controlled media behaved as though there was no trial.
However it did not escape notice that the state media latched onto the accusation that Simels accused some leading members of the Guyana Defence Force of removing the bodies of some slain cane cutters from the front lands to the backlands. In short, the accusation was that the soldiers either participated in or supported the killing of the sugar workers.

Rather than ignore the accusation as they did in relation to the government, they reported on it in a clever way. The sugar union—the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union—decided to latch on to this accusation. The state media used the comments of the sugar union.
Perhaps, the role of the state newspapers is to defend the government in the same way that the private media see their role as reporting on those things that the government would wish to keep quiet.
Dr Misir should recognize this. He should know that no media house has a duty to reflect the positive views of the government only. What should be his drive is to see that those media houses under his control at least report on all sides of a story, even if they have to give prominence to the government side.
The private media houses, regardless of the political affiliation of the owner or the reporter, always carry the news as they see it. The state media should take a leaf from that book.

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News