Dear Editor,
Propaganda press is not new in Guyana, the Caribbean, or the world over, but it could be very damaging.
Guyanese are well aware of misleading articles that appear in the press every day. In fact when we in the diaspora read in Sunday’s issue of the Guyana Times that PM ‘Nagamootoo stripped of all line responsibilities,’ though eyebrows were raised, most of us did not believe it. One friend sent me an email, “Oscar, is it true? I always take Guyana Times with a bit of salt.” My response was that I was not certain, but let’s wait to see if the government will respond. Well, they did, criticizing the Times for misleading the public.
The newspapers did not give top priority to the government’s response. In fact the Kaieteur used it as its No 11 story, while the Times led in Monday’s edition with ‘Region’s economy will suffer tremendously -former President,’ and although it carried the government’s response it did not apologize for the inaccuracy, and to some extent maintained its stand. Stabroek’s top story was ‘Jagdeo and arrogance to blame for PPP/C loss –Ramkarran’ and it used the government’s response as its third story.
In the pre-independence era, the press owned by big business was used as a tool to fool the masses. In fact Peter Taylor’s Evening Post and Sunday Argosy newspapers were anti-Jagan and were used to keep the PPP out of power. The Chronicle was owned by the so called ‘elites’. It was not better after independence since the Burnham administration muzzled the opposition press, making it difficult even to get newsprint. But opposition forces used leaflets such as the Dayclean and other means to get their word out to the public.
We have come a long way ‒ a very long way ‒ and the masses are more aware of present day happenings, both locally and internationally. We now have the powerful social network, facebook, texting, emails, easy access to telephone, etc. The world is getting smaller every day and an incident in Guyana is known overseas within minutes, even before the next door neighbour. Therefore media houses should operate above board and be as accurate as possible in their reports. They should carry balanced stories because their reports are being closely examined by the reading public.
Yours faithfully,
Oscar Ramjeet
