Exerting significant influence on public opinion

Oct 28, 2013 Editorial

Letters to the Editor in the daily newspapers in Guyana exert significant influence on public opinion, but there are certain suspicious aspects of this influence that are worth a closer look.
Many readers say that on some days the best parts of local newspapers are not the news reports but the opinions expressed in Letters to the Editor. These letters are plentiful and popular in Guyana and, like many other things with such qualities, their influence has an upside as well as a downside.
The good side is easy to see. Letters to the editors comprise a valuable service to the public by providing information and viewpoints that might not be reported in the mainstream contents of newspapers. Since they are often based on writers’ personal experiences, they can help the public gain vital new insights on important issues and encourage the relevant authorities to take action.
By writing to newspapers about matters affecting them, citizens show that they still care about what’s happening in their country and their communities. Since Guyana’s newspaper editors seem to be much more flexible with letters than in many other places, writers can usually express themselves straight from the heart.
Such plain talk is an encouraging sign that freedom of speech is alive in Guyana’s fledgling democracy. It is good to encourage persons to express strong opinions in public, even if they are sometimes unsettling. It is clear that most Guyanese believe the right to speak freely about whatever they want is an essential right.
Sometimes letters are angry outbursts; other times they exude unreasonableness or bigotry; some letter writers prefer to hide their identities. But if Guyana is to become a truly open society, it is essential that newspapers provide an outlet for heartfelt opinions. An active democracy needs to bring all the people’s opinions to public light, including those of the dull, the ignorant, the cowardly and others of bad character.
But there is a downside to this. There is a phenomenon in Guyana where certain persons write letters to the newspapers daily to express their opinions about everything under the sun. Many of these are retired citizens and others whose lives are sufficiently leisurely to leave them with lots of time on their hands every day to devote to writing letters to the editors of local newspapers.
The opinions of these writers are valuable, and they have every right to express them as they see fit. However, the trend of opinions expressed in their letters on any issue at any particular time is sometimes mistaken as the trend of public opinion in Guyana as a whole. It is not. There are a lot of people in Guyana — the overwhelming majority — who do not write letters to the editor, but whose opinions ought to count as much as those who do.
Educators say the levels of functional illiteracy in Guyana are high, maybe as high as 60%, therefore many Guyanese may not be equipped to express their opinions publicly in letters to newspapers, and possibly never will. Therefore, when readers peruse the letters to the editors in the newspapers they should remember that in all likelihood they represent the views, individually and collectively, of the eloquent and articulate among us, and do not necessarily represent those of the common folk.
Also, when considering the influence of letter writers in the newspapers, it is useful to consider that the body of opinion that is reflected on any issue does not necessarily represent a balance of the letters received, but only those chosen for publication. To put it simply, if there are two letters published expressing a particular viewpoint and two published reflecting an opposing view, there might have been many others supporting one view or the other that were not published for various reasons.
Furthermore, the letter pages in newspapers sometimes reflect artificially contrived bodies of opinion. For example, an editor may subjectively balance the amount of letters published with opposing views, when in fact there was a preponderance of letters supporting one viewpoint instead of another. Indeed in this way some editors can manipulate the influence of letter pages on public opinion.
Undoubtedly, Letters to the Editor are invaluable to newspapers and the pursuit of democracy. But discerning readers should be wary of their influence and the accuracy of their reflection of public opinion.

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Exerting significant influence on public opinion

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