Caricature and farce in social media

Aug 05, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – I received a telephone call from Mr. Nohar Singh, the owner of Globe-Span which hosts a weekly interview programme using Zoom. Mr. Singh requested I be a guest on one of the programmes. I could not make it on the day he suggested but I did tell him, I would have declined the request anyway.

Unless Mr. Singh changes the format of his Zoom interview programming, I will not accept an invitation. He has a right to shape his arrangement, I have a right to reject being in circumstances that insult my dignity and love of country.

There are Guyanese living in Guyana who constantly appear on the Globe-Span platform, happy to be questioned by interviewers who do not reside in Guyana and haven’t been to Guyana for “donkey years.” Maybe they need to be seen and heard and want the publicity. I certainly do not.

I am opened to being on any show but I refuse to be interviewed by persons who do not live in my country and are discussing problems, issues, occurrences, projects, politics, social nuances, sociological factors in my country. I find that to be a caricature and a farce.

Over my long career in journalism and human rights activism, I have been approached by foreigners in person. They were journalists visiting Guyana. They were on the ground in Guyana. Mr. Nohar’s project has four interviewers – Mr. Charles Sugrim, Paul Tennassee, Dr. Asquith Rose and Mr. Vishnu Bisram, all of whom do not live in Guyana and haven’t been in Guyana in recent years. Mr. Bisram would assert that he visits Guyana often.

My contestation is that such an interview format is not only flawed but nonsensical. I would like to be corrected but I know of no such format in any other country.

How can you be an American living in Iceland and you are interviewing another American on election prospects in November and your guest is living in Greenland? The professional and decent thing to do is for an American living in the US to question another American who is living in the US on the likely election results in November.

The dialogue will be far, far more productive because interviewee and interviewer will have confronted angles and nuances in American society that will aid their capacity to make predictions about the mid-term elections in November in the US.

I was sent a video in which Moray House conducted a Zoom programme. The host was Ms. Isabelle DeCaires. The guests were Dr. Alissa Trotz and Dr. Arif Bulkan. The topic was race and politics in Guyana. Host and guests have foreign residencies (maybe citizenship, I don’t know) and have not been in Guyana for years now. I ask a commonsensical question? How discerning and enlightening will be their contributions when they do not experience “the vibes” by being on the ground here?

I saw a Globe-Span programme with the four American-based interviewers named above discussing race and politics with Dr. Baytoram Ramharack. With due respect to Dr. Ramharack who is a qualified social scientists, he does not live in Guyana so he will not have first-hand knowledge of the vicissitudes, vagaries, shapes and contortions of Guyanese politics. He is not in Guyana to observe the forks and bends in the political rivers of Guyanese politics.

Messrs. Glenn Lall, Sherod Duncan and Mikhail Rodrigues (Guyanese Critic) are on social media and they interview people and an ocean of things is commented on by them. If you agree or disagree, they will tell you that they know this or that because they have been talking to this or that person.

David Hinds has a social media programme named Politics 101. He comes to Guyana each year. He is in Guyana at the moment. He spoke at the Buxton Emancipation talk and at the APNU rally last Tuesday. He has access to political players so in his interviews he can tell his guests he encountered and chatted with an important political player that he met at a black pudding stand owned by an Indian woman from Mon Repos.

Naim Chan has a daily morning show on Channel 6. He dialogues with Guyanese living in Guyana. Chan lives in Guyana. NCN has a programme in which their Guyanese based journalists have interesting discussions with interesting personalities who can talk about what’s happening in Guyana because they live in Guyana.

I may be wrong but I see no sense in a Guyanese on Globe-Span living in Montana asking a Guyanese residing in Wyoming about how the local government election in Guyana in 2023 is likely to be fought. Surely that has to be a circus.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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Caricature and farce in social media

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