There is no disagreement that the threat uttered against President Jagdeo on a live call-in programme on CNS Channel Six on February 21 was criminal, reprehensible and inexcusable. The unfiltered call came four days after the Bartica massacre which had been preceded several weeks before by the Lusignan slaughter. Tensions were running high, fear gripped all parts of the country and members of the public were no doubt given to extravagant postulates and declarations. The offending caller was one such person. She said in part “…look at these killings and nobody can’t give account about these people’s lives and Jagdeo going to take a high risk job by going and tell people to calm down; he’s going to bury the dead bodies. If anything is going to happen to my family. I am going to kill Jagdeo”.
The reportedly elderly woman should not have said what she said and the proprietor of the station, Mr Sharma intervened and told her so.
Mr Sharma was however exceedingly careless in not editing that particular comment out of the programme which was subsequently rebroadcast thrice. When he was pressed on this point by President Jagdeo’s legal team he had no plausible explanation. Mr Sharma had told the Advisory Committee on Broadcasting (ACB) in reply to their complaint “In the instance when it was replayed prior to your letter, it was done without my knowledge by the person who books programmes”. As the proprietor of the station and considering the broadcaster’s liability in this matter that admission by Mr Sharma exposed a shocking dereliction of duty and clearly a transgression that occurs too often in the broadcast media.