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Kissoon and gang are no threat to this Govt.

Feb 24, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
I refer to Mr. Freddie Kissoon’s column of February 22, 2010 in the Kaieteur News.
I see now I am in his ‘Three Musketeers’ grouping; in my childhood days, I endeared the reference to me as one of the Corsican brothers; but now Kissoon by the stroke of his pen makes me a ‘musketeer’.  Let me see if I can bring my literary force to the fore here on what really is ‘The Three Musketeers’ thing.
In 1600, King Henry IV established his elite King’s Force as his personal guards. The King rehashed this Force in 1646 and instituted within it a greater force in 1657. This Force, 150 musketeers strong, became the “Gray Musketeers” and subsequently, “Black Musketeers”. Notwithstanding this Force was a group of musketeers, in Dumas’ literary pieces, they carted no muskets.
This was because the musketeers observed exacting code of ethics and honour; the King’s Musketeers were very noble men and legendary fighters.
Notwithstanding this latest literary accolade of ‘nobility’ Kissoon bestows on me, I would like to ‘pass’ on this one as some would say. Maybe someday I can accept when he develops some ‘nobility’ in journalism.
His entire column on February 22, 2010 is farcical, and it is this mindset and personal construct that make for poor journalism. I said enough in the past on this matter, but I do want to briefly restate this position.
It is beyond the scope of a letter to explicate and impugn the travesty of poor journalism. Compliance with the elementals of good journalism, i.e., fundamental fairness, objectivity, balance, sensitivity, etc., is mandatory, non-debatable, and non-negotiable.
In Guyana, there are many journalists whether they are pro-government or anti-government, who portray themselves to be professionals, but from their writings we can tell the level of unprofessionalism they possess by the amount of incoherent chatter they produce.
However, I still hold the view that Freddie Kissoon’s career as an academic quite distinct from his column implies the execution of a ‘role-modeling’ responsibility that should prominently be invasive in his columns; but that kind of responsibility is consistently missing; his columns seem to exhibit a strong ‘hear say’ characteristic.
And let me say with the strongest power of this pen possible that Freddie Kissoon is no threat to this government, but his columns could endanger the sagging journalism in Guyana; his writings convey, too, wrong and superfluous messages, especially to gullible Guyanese. For this reason, compliance with the fundamental media code of conduct is serious business; non-compliance breeds distortions.
Today, in Guyana, the only danger of all is in a false media. We must reject the force of its false opinion on the electronic media or in the print media front. We must refute the agitation it engenders, too.
Today, some critics including Freddie Kissoon continue to make this allegation ad nauseum against the government, that Guyana is an elected dictatorship; nonetheless, this ‘dictatorship’ continues to allow Kissoon his say everyday in the print media; clearly, this ‘dictatorship’ is not worth its salt in providing so much media freedom to Kissoon and whoever else.
Prem Misir

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