Plagiarism in Guyanese journalism

Oct 21, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There is a frenzied sharing of e-mails among media practitioners at the moment, especially those who are members of the Guyana Press Association GPA). The origin of this activity began with what the Guyana Chronicle did to Dennis Chabrol.
Mr. Chabrol was asked for his permission by the Chronicle for his report on the death of a married couple in Belize to be reproduced by the Chronicle. According to Chabrol, his condition was that there must be acknowledgement. That goes without saying. Chabrol’s item was published in the Chronicle without the source being named.
Accusation of plagiarism was made. Indeed it is if there is no editorial statement at the bottom of the news item on where it was obtained when the newspaper had requested the news item from another journalistic operative.
I have read by way of the GPA e-mail network system among its members, the most asinine account by the Guyana’s editorial sycophants. Mr. Chabrol was told that there was an acknowledgement of his work but for some unknown reason that last line was left out. Only the slaves in this world that support elected dictatorship in Guyana would believe that miasmic explanation.
In discussing the imbroglio with Mr. Chabrol, I suggested to him that he should not have had a relationship with the Chronicle in the first place because he should know about the low types who have made the Chronicle into one of the worst gutter newspapers in the world.
The hypocrisy in this country is overwhelmingly overbearing. When the Kaieteur News published the photograph of the head of a murdered victim in Agricola a few years back, a group of well known female citizens denounced the newspaper and urged a boycott. Those very women have remained silent on what the Chronicle has become. A newspaper reporting the news of actual events is targeted for boycott, but not a word from these ladies on the gutter nature of the Chronicle.
In fact these very citizens are quite happy to send their letters to the Chronicle as if the Chronicle is a mainstream newspaper.
I see people like attorney Josephine Whitehead and Andrea Rohlehr (two of the women who publicly stated they will not read Kaieteur News again because of the head controversy) write letters to the Chronicle. Women activists like Karen De Souza and Andaiye also continue to give recognition to the Chronicle by way of letters.
The Chronicle has become nasty, repugnant and stink in a way that is unimaginable. Let me say that even the 20th century fascist newspapers in Italy and Germany wouldn’t have stooped as low as the Chronicle has been doing. When you compare the Chronicle in the PNC days with the dirt that exists today, there can be no question that the PNC Government ran a professional paper back then.
I say most unambiguously; if President Burnham had ruled Guyana for a hundred years the Chronicle would not have become the infested, rotting putrid mess that it is today.
There are no calls for a boycott when horrible things are printed by the Chronicle on people like Khemraj Ramjattan, Christopher Ram, Mark Benschop and this writer. On Tuesday, Mr. Mark Benschop sued the paper for libel. I read the affidavit. The Chronicle had accused Mr. Benschop of extreme criminal activities with “Cobra.”
To think that a newspaper can actually and directly name an opposition figure as being involved in violent crimes without proof. In which other newspaper can that happen? Can CBS or CNN or NBC actually name a Senator who was involved in robbery/murder without the evidence?
For all the reports in opposition circles and in the private media on the phantom killings, there has been one single name cited among the members of the Cabinet as murdering another citizen. No opposition critic or newspaper has named Minister Ramsammy as having committed murder against a named person.
Three lawyers have offered their service to me in libel suits against the Chronicle. Before now, I stated on this page that I am prepared to take legal action, the most defamatory, scandalous and vicious descriptions poured out on me by the Chronicle.
I did a counting exercise for 2008 and 2009 and for each year, the letters on me exceeded two hundred. A majority of them derogated my character. This has never happened before in any newspaper in the Caribbean. There was some amount of hypocrisy in those e-mails.
None of the journalists had anything to say about the nature of the Chronicle. Of course Stabroek News has lifted many scoops from my columns without acknowledgement, the latest being Government’s part financing of Jamzone.

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Plagiarism in Guyanese journalism

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