Dear Editor,
I have been carefully following the recent media disclosures on a lot of important issues and matters, some of which have attracted the attention of the Guyana courts. These include the Kato School, Haags Bosch landfill, and the continuing saga over the Sussex Street pharmaceutical bond.
It is a good thing that the media and the opposition are raising issues that concern public spending. This is their duty. Many newspapers have professionally trained investigative reporting teams. At the present time Guyana does not have such teams.
What we do have is newspapers, especially one popular tabloid, predisposed to sensational reporting based on half-baked tips, stories and rumours but still struggling to marshal all the facts. The challenge of getting all the facts often proves difficult in the absence of professionally trained staff. So generally you just end up with what you have and invariably end up with sensationalism to sell newspapers rather than fair and balanced reporting.
In the case of Haags Bosch, we still do not know how a settlement was arrived at involving hundreds of millions of dollars, because the documentation is not available for serious analysis.
In its stead there is daily speculation and innuendo and abuse of one contractor. With this approach, the participants are less likely to cooperate with any proper investigation and the public will be left to speculate on the so called settlement.
This also happened with the story about a PS. The situation is being repeated with the Sussex Street bond. In the absence of facts we have daily so-called paid advertisements calling for the firing of a Minister. The daily campaign is unprecedented in local newspaper publishing and tells us more about the publisher than the Minister. The opposition properly called for the National Assembly to deal with the issue, but the tabloid continues to maintain its campaign. The problem here is that they may or may not have all true facts, and never try to get the real facts, but still report to create a problem more than a solution. Because of silence about and participation in previous skullduggery, they lack credibility and believability among the populace.
Many commentators also have a predisposition to enter the fray even though they themselves do not possess the facts and keep repeating the first set of published half-baked accounts. The truth of the matter is that the media and the opposition have a right to and an obligation to get all the facts and then bring them to the attention of the public without sensationalism and character
assassination and self-righteousness, malice and viciousness.
The public need the facts on ExxonMobil agreements, the sale of Sanata, Guyana Stores and Stock-feeds, sole-sourcing by the GPHC and Ministry of Health from NGPC, re-migrant vehicle scams, GuySuCo fertilizer deals, the giveaway of bauxite to Rusal and Bosai, the Skeldon Plant disaster, Enmore packaging plant fiasco, the ex-AG and the law books originally paid for by the Government of Guyana and so on. Expose all do all. Do not be selective.
In his judgment delivered by Justice of Appeal B S Roy in the matter of Ramsahoye v Glenn Lall and National Media Co (Civil appeal No l 69 2008) Justice Roy stated, “There can be very little doubt that the respondents (Lall and National Media) used the media under their control and management as a weapon of character destruction and claimed in their defence they acted in the usual course of their business as public journalists and without malice. They also claimed that the degradation of the appellant’s (Ramsahoye’s) character and reputation to be fair comment which the trial judge held to be an outrage.”
This is a clear statement. There is indeed a pressing need to move away from sensationalism and character assassination and to do professional investigative work to expose wrongdoing wherever it occurs and to be consistent and to avoid malice, viciousness and vindictiveness and self-righteousness.
Yours faithfully,
Ramon Gaskin
