Dear Editor,
I must say that I am indeed disappointed in the general misinterpretation of my letter to the press regarding the ‘miracles’ of the Hindu statues. Firstly, my letter was heavily edited by the Stabroek News (the original of which can be found at my websitewww.leonjsuseran. webs.com).
I must not be misconstrued in my letter, that I accepted that the event was a miracle. I have not accepted this ‘miracle,’ but at the same time, I have not denied that such occurrences cannot happen or could take place in the present or future.
I do not assign a headline to a letter to the editor; the editor does this. I really did not expect the headline of my letter in Monday’s edition of the SN to have read, ‘Where are the local media?’ Perhaps it wasn’t the best header.
The main purpose of my letter to the press was not to highlight my ‘dissatisfaction’ at the newspapers’ (SN) decision not to carry the ‘miracle.’ On the contrary, I may have hinted in that sentence (about the matter’s absence in the local media) in my letter, to justify from what exactly the newspapers derive credible news from what they do not. In this case, they have not found the matter credible enough for coverage. Let’s leave it at that.
Yours faithfully,
Leon Suseran
Editor’s note
Mr Suseran did more than “hint” that he considered the local media, including Stabroek News, should have covered the event. He prefaced his comments in this regard with a paragraph on media operatives from Trinidad coming here to cover the ‘miracle,’ and ended it with the question, “…where are our very own local media in all of this?” It was this sentence which supplied the caption.
The bulk of Mr Suseran’s letter concerned miracles per se, which we would not normally carry. We do not publish correspondence on purely religious questions, no matter what the faith, unless it has bearing on public issues of a non-religious nature. In this instance, the last portion of the letter contained a criticism of Stabroek News which we felt obliged to carry, and we therefore included enough of the beginning portion to give that criticism context. In other words, the letter was not edited with a view to communicating Mr Suseran’s opinion on miracles as such, but to convey his criticism of the media response – a public issue.
