Dear Editor,
A recently published letter from an apparent overseas observer bemoaned the poor standard of presentations generally seen and heard on Guyana’s television.
On Thursday night, 6th March, 2008 NCN which employs several of these transgressing broadcasters rushed, for some reason, to confirm the accuracy of this perception by airing a palpably ill-read story between 19:30 hours and 20:00 hours.
I quickly lost interest in the recital of a story the words of which were screened, when the name Brady (Braydee) was pronounced ‘Braadee’. When soon I discovered that the reader was unfamiliar with a ‘cigar’ and called it a ‘cigger’ (rhyming with digger), I promptly demitted the channel.
I have always wondered why certain public organisations and particularly communication organisations, are allowed to flout their mediocrity with such impunity.
Apart from occasional news programmes, I have long tried to escape the assault on the senses by untrained voices, poor enunciation and the sub-literacy so purposefully exhibited on our visual media. Cumulatively they constitute an embarrassment to better informed Guyanese; and must also be a source of bemusing instruction to enquiring foreigners as to the local industry’s ‘professional’ standards. Certainly the latter are a stark and negative contrast to the standards executed in the rest of the Caribbean, some of which are exhibited nightly on our local screens.
As a former broadcaster I reflect every now and then the chill that gripped me when I realised that one mis-pronunciation which slipped through my presentation would have been heard by my boss A. J. Seymour, and that I would have to face his cold, caressing reprimand next morning.
This insistence on celebrating mediocrity is becoming increasingly institutionalised and is an unwelcome facet of our cultural landscape.
Yours faithfully,
Eliah Bijay
