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The newspapers that officials hate

Apr 14, 2014 Editorial

There was a time when the media, more particularly the newspapers and the radio, reported on the happenings in the country. These reports were primarily about the daily happenings, the social events like weddings of prominent people and births and things like the weather. On radio there was a special segment for the deaths of people.
In the pre-independence days there were no less than five newspapers, two of them were evening issues. They were cheap and chockfull of advertisement. Each newspaper had its clientele; one was business oriented; one focused on politics and the other was a hodge-podge of everything. One by one those that failed to cater for the wider national interest failed.
The first to go was the paper that concentrated on what people considered the mundane business reports. The readers were not enamoured about the arrival of some goods or the other unless or the expansion of some family business. This was the forte of the Argosy and it was the first to fold. The society was changing and so too was the face of business in Guyana, literally.
The Graphic was the major newspaper being older and more in keeping with the broadsheet courts; it has a special column called Champagne and Gossip that dealt with the social events but only those that featured the hoity-toity. In short, it had everything that the society wanted to know. The Chronicle, which had a largely political focus, was acquired by government when it foundered. And the Graphic had hit dire straits. Neither was satisfying the needs of the people.
As much as people may criticize the ownership of the state media the government of the day kept both newspapers alive by way of a merger and pretty soon there was a staff that covered every gamut of the social spectrum. Up until 1992 it remained the largest selling newspaper in the country despite the appearance of the privately-owned Stabroek News.
There were other newspapers that surfaced but they failed because they could not satisfy the taste of the readers. The result was that they failed to make a dent on the clientele of the two major newspapers and soon closed their doors. Another factor was that they did not have their own printing press so the cost of production was excessively high.
Kaieteur News emerged to compete with the established papers first by opening its pages to every section of the society; it also pandered to the tastes of the ordinary man by reporting on the things that make the society what it is. There were the various disputes between neighbours, the harassment by officialdom, the sufferings of people, the impact of robberies, fires and even rapes.
In the end it became the most sold newspaper in the country and remains so to this day. It still covers just about every aspect of the society and while it has been doing this it has seen the rapid decline of the state newspaper and the development of a culture of governmental dislike of the private media, the Kaieteur News more than the Stabroek News.
What become more noticeable are the reports that the government finds objectionable. Both of the private newspapers have begun to focus on investigative reports, often questioning decisions by the government and challenging the award of certain contracts. More recently, the probes by these papers have centered on the relationship between the government and the New Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation.
Not surprisingly, the government has not been happy with the disclosures although at the centre of the probe is a private company. New Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation has not taken kindly to the disclosures and has even resorted to ad hominen attacks against the owners and editors of these papers.
More recently, the issue took on unimaginable proportions with slanders being heaped on people, especially by people closely associated with the government. It begs the question of whether a defence mechanism has kicked in. This would be rather unusual for a government that prides itself on being open and fair.

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