Dear Editor,
I refer to a letter captioned “This store gives no bill, refused a refund ” (08.01.03).
I won’t comment on the alleged non-issuance of a receipt and refusal to give a refund from the store, as reported by the letter writer, except to commend him/her for an apparent interest in consumer rights. Of more concern is the way the paper’s editor permitted the reference to the race of the store owner/employees to be published.. In the context of the story, such a reference was totally uncalled for and a blatant violation of an elementary journalistic principle: never cite a person’s race (or national origin, religion, sexual orientation, physical disability, marital status or other personal characteristic) unless it is absolutely necessary and pertinent.
What has the race of the store owners/employees have to do with it ? All such a reference does is to pander to impressionable readers in a sensationalist way and who may then generalise from the alleged incident to conclude that all Chinese people may be that way. The editor should have been more responsible and edited out such references.
The letter writer’s further claim that “the Chinese stores are protected by the Chinese Embassy and even have diplomatic status” is, as with the additional charges of the employees “pounding the counter with a hanger (and ) gibbering away”, personal opinion and may be even described as rumour mongering. It also should have been deleted. Regent Street is a relatively small commercial section and this store may be identified from the information given.
Dismayingly, your “Editor’s Note” at the end then gives credibility to such apparent xenophobia (irrational phychological fear of foreigners) by stating that you would send the letter to the “Chinese store”.
People of Chinese descent have contributed, and continue to do so, to Guyana’s development and this unprofessionalism on your part is regrettable.
Yours faithfully,
Norman Faria
Editor’s note
We do not normally give the race of a store owner or any other person for the reasons quite properly stated by Mr Faria. The only reason for doing so in this case was the alleged protection afforded by the Chinese Embassy to which the writer said an official at the consumer desk of the Ministry of Tourism had referred when he made a complaint about the treatment he had received at the store.
In retrospect, a better course would have been to have sent the letter in advance of publication to the Chinese Embassy for their comment on the allegations.
We are now doing this. We have also sent a letter to the manager of the store for his comments.
