Dear Editor,
I write in relation to an editorial note in which you replied to Mr Vishnu Bisram’s contention (Thursday, Nov 21) that the SN wanted to know and published his job and educational background at my insistence. You correctly pointed out that I never made any request to your paper on the issue. I did in letters to both the SN and KN question the employment and academic standing of Mr Bisram and I stick with my position.
I will not respond directly to Mr Bisram to whom I think the SN and KN have allowed too much latitude without demanding answers from him about his status in the US. I figured the reason for this is because both papers take the position that a letter writer is entitled to his/her views outside of bad taste and libel. I did pen a missive to both papers questioning this policy. I argued that if a letter-writer signs as a medical doctor with a clinic in High Street, Kingston, and there is no such clinic, the policy of the media should be to erase the publication of the clinic’s name because it is misleading
For this reason, I advanced the point that each time Mr Bisram mentioned that he did a poll for Nacta, that should be edited out unless Mr Bisram can prove to the media that there is a polling organization named Nacta and he is its polling expert. Over a ten year period, Mr Bisram has failed to do so even though there is an editorial note in which SN stated that in a conversation with Sunday editor, Anna Benjamin, Mr Bisram was advised to publish information about his substantive job.
I will not respond to anything Mr Bisram writes about me because I have no respect for his so-called scholarship. But if the editor requests I can supply copies of more than ten letters over a long period of time in which Mr Bisram described copiously all the polls he did for Nacta over the years, and the months and years he did them. Every month in the calendar year is covered. Any schoolboy would know that such a person cannot be a school teacher when over a ten year period he has spent the calendar year perambulating around the world.
It is either he is indeed a school teacher and he doesn’t do polling around the globe or he is not a teacher but travels the around the globe. But it can’t be both.
In my files I have volumes of letters in the press from Mr Bisram that state the time he spends around he world doing polls. When I questioned his school teacher status, two persons replied on his behalf but none of them provided proof of his teaching status. Two defended Mr Bisram, one of them claiming he made his money in real estate.
In relation to his workplace, he wrote a missive saying that he was afraid to name his place of employment because in his previous job, someone tried to paint a nasty picture of him to his employer. I have his published mail on that score. Over the past ten years, he has published letters about the universities he has been to, the professors who taught him, and the qualifications he received, but has not given the years.
This is my last correspondence on Mr Bisram. It is my opinion that media houses know that he is not a professional pollster. My only regret is that the newspapers have allowed him to state in his letters that his fictional polls are done through an organization in New York named Nacta. That should be edited out from his letters. He has the right to publish his correspondence in the newspapers stating that he did this and that survey. That is his right that the newspapers should not deny him.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Kissoon
