There can only be negative news these days

Jun 12, 2011 Features / Columnists, My Column

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By Adam Harris

Life is so full of shocks and surprises that I no longer wonder what the day would bring. I know that not a day will go by without me having to report on something of interest to the people.
More often than not people prefer to hear about the shocking things like the murders, the rapes and the robberies. Indeed, they would also want to hear about the good things, but more often than not they would not be content with only the good news.
There was a newspaper in the United States that opted to print only good news. And so it did, but it did not last long. The people simply sent the message by refusing to buy and maintain it.
That is why I get a bit annoyed when people call me to complain that all I seem to print is the negative news. It is not true that I print only negative news. Indeed, these days the negative news seems to predominate.
On Monday I went out to work and there I had cause to report that there was a case of a mother abandoning her children, one of whom was a mere six weeks old. That was depressing and it hurt me. I simply could not imagine a mother leaving a baby to its own devices.
Just days earlier, there was the case of a woman abandoning her baby along a trail in the Rupununi. She was worse than the basest animal. This is a woman who got pregnant, did not consider abortion and created a life. She suffered the pangs of childbirth and then abandoned her creation that at one stage she surely treasured.
These same thoughts ran through my mind when I learnt of the mother who abandoned her three children. She simply left a six-year-old to care for his younger siblings. I was sickened. This woman caused me to think about the government sterilizing some people. She had three children for three different men, so I can only conclude that for her pregnancy was incidental. The pleasures of sex were the most important thing in her life.
Then there were the murders. A family learnt that a member was shot. The killer’s relatives supported the announcement and the police were lackadaisical in their search. They did not keep an eye on the killer so when they found the body the killer had disappeared.
The next day there was a murder and a suicide. Not long after a teenager stabbed a man thirty-three times because of a cellular phone. In between there were the odd cases of robberies. A man is entering his yard and he is attacked and relieved of a quantity of cash. This man does not even see it fit to report the robbery to the police.
If one believes those things were all that happened in one short week one had to think again. Two very young men admitted that they were on their way to rob a Chinese establishment. Certainly they were emulating their role models.
A woman who lived in a home for 45 years suddenly found herself on the streets with her belongings. A group of young men simply turned up and removed the roof and walls. They even removed the stairs.
In New Amsterdam a house went up in flames and a woman died. She was said to be visually impaired. The initial investigation suggested that she was asleep and was overcome by smoke.
The week ended with word that four notorious criminals managed to escape from the New Amsterdam prisons. One of them was serving nine years for piracy and had been sentenced mere days before he escaped.
Another was bold enough to cuss in the court and to hurl a chair at reporters. He was there for murder and a host of other serious crimes.
But even more interesting this week was a more than significant cocaine bust. So significant was the bust that the residents of Bartica called out to each other, begging them to stay at home for fear of retaliation by the people who might have been responsible for the presence of the cocaine.
There were other bits of negative news. The people of many Rupununi communities were under water. They had to rely on food being flown in, because the road linking the coast and the Rupununi was under water.
People were stranded in their homes and they could not even use boats because there were precious few. Water had seeped into everything. The power station was flooded out so blackout was the standard fare.
One gas station was inundated, as were the outhouses, and there was the threat of diseases. But when people believed that the Rupununi was the only place under water, news came that Kwakwani was also under water and perhaps more so than the Rupununi. The photographs were telling.
Strange though it may seem, these negative events all occurred in the week just past. And of course, I did not get a call criticizing me for the preponderance of negative news.
What was surprising was the apathy. There was no rush by people with more money than they could spend in their lifetime offering to help the unfortunate people in the flood-hit areas. In fact, all the interest seemed concentrated in the news media. Perhaps, we have become a most apathetic people, only concerned when we are involved in whatever unfortunate may come our way.
I looked for good news. I found that the government is promising to reintroduce the railroad; that there is going to be some effort to provide a legal facility to help families; and of course, the distribution of house lots to 1,000 people.
And so I await the coming week with its share of negative news. Will I get a call informing me about being too negative? I think not.

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