… the media
As a columnist for this newspaper, your Eyewitness doesn’t get the opportunity to interact much with the day to day reporters on the beat. With the recent walkout of three reporters – in fear for their lives if they report on television about the escapades of the MuckrakerKN’s Mohan “Glenn” Lall – we have a most interesting development in the journalistic fraternity.
Why is it that none of the reporters are willing to concede their fears in public? They were willing to talk about those fears behind closed doors – but the moment they left the Guyana Times building, they offered “journalistic integrity” as their reason for walking off their jobs. Now, that is all well and good and noble, but does it have anything to do with what played out? The reporter who triggered the walkout now says she hadn’t written the script about Lall which she was handed to read on air and couldn’t vouch for its veracity.
One wonders if she would’ve been willing to do the investigative work from the beginning if she were asked.
We’re told that the administration will now be asking the remaining reporters about being journalists with “integrity” to do their own investigative stories. We shall see what unfolds. But the larger question is, “Why has the journalism fraternity been unwilling to check out the source of the reporters’ fears?”
In the media, there are constant charges of “drug empires”, smuggling, human smuggling, money laundering etc, which obviously would involve individuals who would go to great lengths to protect their identities. If for no other reason than the fact that the U. S. has “renditioned” a number of drug lords. So if there were no fear there should’ve been a heck of a lot more investigative reporting than we’ve seen.
Point of fact is that Guyana Times investigative pieces are nothing more than follow- ups to a cable from the U. S. embassy’s political officer. From the one that mentioned Glenn Lall’s exploits and the others revealed by WikiLeaks, it’s obvious that the political officer certainly has his ears to the (Guyanese) ground. The question is – once again – why did all the other media houses refuse to touch the allegations with a 10-foot pole.
If the reporters that quit – or any other reporter or journalist, whether honing to the ethics taught by the University of Guyana (UG) Centre for Communication Studies or whatever – doubted the veracity of the news unearthed by Guyana Times, why don’t they do the journalistic thing and do their own digging?
… politics and economics
There isn’t only fear in the journalistic community about what skeletons might be uncovered – a lot of that commodity abounds in the political realm. But here we don’t have to even do any digging – it’s all out there right in the open. The new kid in the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) block Tarron Khemraj who walked over from the Alliance For Change (AFC) – was given back his column in the Stabber News. (It doesn’t matter to the Stabber – once the columnist isn’t People’s Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/ C).
He weighed in on the notion of “political risk”… but we thought he danced around the issue – very well as he had to, seeing that his new party presents the greatest political risk to this country’s development.
Imagine Granger had informed the international business community that if APNU were to form a new government (would Khemraj be given the finance slot ahead of the old codger Carl Greenidge?) they would not honour contracts entered into by the present government.
Now even if Khemraj studied Samuelson in Econ 101, he would know this is the kiss of death to the “probability” future substantial Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) for the next decade.
… Diwali
Can you believe that the festival of Diwali, which is supposed to be one of peace and tranquility, in which one becomes enraptured by lights, is now being hijacked by thugs hurling squibs? Why can’t the police enforce the ban on this explosive device?