Dear Editor,
I have always looked to the Stabroek News for fair and unbiased reporting on Guyana. For this reason, I was disappointed with the features column of August 24, 2009, captioned ‘What the people say about… The Simels conviction’ by reporter Sara Bharrat with photographs by Jules Gibson.
Indian Guyanese comprise the largest segment of the population, yet of the ten individuals featured (pictured with their opinions), not one appears to be Indo-Guyanese. Everyone knows that in Guyana opinion on this and all political matters is generally split along racial lines. Consequently, by not featuring any Indian Guyanese, the appearance of bias has been created.
Regrettably, after more than forty years of independence the motto of ‘One People, One Nation, One Destiny’ remains a pipe-dream and we cannot pretend otherwise.
One hopes that this is a lapse in editorial judgement and not an indication of a change in policy at the Stabroek News.
Yours faithfully,
Harry Hergash
Editor’s note
The ‘What the people say’ feature does not pretend to be a poll of Guyanese opinion, and those who agree to have their photos and views published on any given topic cannot in any sense be described as a statistical sample. For all of that we do try to achieve some sort of racial and gender balance, etc, in terms of our interviewees, but there are occasions when that is simply not possible.
The question on the Simels conviction proved to be one of those times when people in general were reluctant to express a public viewpoint, and Indians in particular were disinclined to speak.
The reporter and photographer spent about five hours on the road for the purposes of this feature, during which period they stopped around fifty persons. About twenty of these were Indian and a few were Amerindian; none of the latter agreed to be interviewed but contrary to Mr Hergash’s assertion one of the former did, although her ethnicity is not reflected in her name.