Killing the messenger

Aug 22, 2010 Editorial

Last week, to illustrate its report examining Venezuela’s failure to stem widespread violent crime, El Nacional, one of that country’s largest newspapers, published a photograph of bodies piled up at a Caracas morgue. In a move that may be a harbinger of things to come in Guyana, a Venezuelan court ordered the paper (and another that had followed suit) to cease immediately from publishing the photographs and indicated that substantial fines were in the offing.
In its ruling, the court expanded its gaze and announced that it was prohibiting the publication in all printed media of “images, information and publicity of any type that contains blood, guns, alarming messages or physical aggression images that incorporate warfare content and messages about killings and deaths that could alter the well being of children and adolescents.” The editor of the newspaper Miguel Henrique Otero angrily denounced the ruling. “This doesn’t have anything to do with …. protecting children and juveniles,” he declared flatly. “It’s political.”
He accused the court of bowing to political pressures: the government had long denounced El Nacional for taking an “opposition” stance and more specifically, the Attorney General had announced that he would launch an investigation to determine if El Nacional broke the law by publishing the photograph. The government had accused the newspaper of publishing the story on crime as part of its campaign against Chavez’s Party ahead of Sept. 26 legislative polls.
The episode and its denouement have eerie echoes of what has been our government’s response to this newspaper in its coverage of the news in our country. In a statement that mirrors our position locally, the editors of the Venezuelan newspaper caught in the crosshairs of their government’s ire (and fire), plaintively pointed out that the photographs and news are not manufactured by the newspapers: they reflect the reality of Venezuela.
For instance, Venezuela has one of the highest murder rates in South America and before the government clamped down on the release of statistics, in the first eleven months of 2009, the number of murders had already gone past 12,000. The morgues are routinely incapable of handling this deluge of bodies expeditiously. The National Press Workers’ Trade Union (SNTP) of Venezuela declared that the measure was absurd and represented censorship and repression against freedom of speech especially since the ban was extended to all printed media, “until the issue is resolved by the court in a month”. It pointed out that crime was the number one concern of the citizens of Venezuela.
The question of the effect of “gory” pictures on impressionable young minds is, of course, a very valid one – one that every editor has to grapple with daily. The larger question however, is to ask what is the role of the newspaper in presenting the news to the nation so that action may be taken to address the problem highlighted. All murder is ugly and we cannot pretend that sequestering images of the victims helps our youths. All too often, youths are actually the victims or eyewitnesses to the violence that threatens to overwhelm the society. As the editor of one of the affected Venezuelan newspapers said, the image was intended to show the people the effects of the violence in their nation: the government, unfortunately, chose to kill the messenger instead of addressing the violence.
In Guyana, we have seen our murder rate climb inexorably upwards in the last decade to a point where it is now more that double that of New York City – widely acknowledged as a violent locale. It is of no help that our officials point out that Jamaica’s or T&T’s murder rate may be even higher than ours: that is a matter for their governments. It is the responsibility of our government to ensure that we return once again to the peaceful days that we once enjoyed and which countries (such as the Scandinavian ones) still enjoy. It can be done. The press has to point out to those responsible, the job still to be done.