Journalists covering our cool country

COVERING our country to tell the stories of Guyanese living and breathing the pure natural air of our land, of people building and constructing their homes and buying cars and attending the University of Guyana and thriving in achieving their dreams: Oh what a great privilege and rewarding pursuit to encounter the throbbing Guyanese heart!Journalists stand owning this opportunity to travel through our communities, to look into the eyes of our people, to see the dreams and aspirations of Guyanese, to feel the pulse of our aliveness as we launch out with boldness and courage and freedom as a 21st Century society.

Our farmers, our women escaping the trap of domestication, our children in colourful uniforms peacefully traversing village streets and hinterland rivers to attend school, this is the Guyana that breaths alive today, feeding ourselves, dressing with fashionable clothes, building stylish houses, aiming for grand careers.
And Journalists and Reporters writing for the national media own the opportunity to showcase the drama and theatre and humanity of the Guyanese soul.
A HIGHER CALLING
Journalists should never, ever become stooges, or express their natural biases and prejudices in their work. Journalists should embody the noble ethics of a higher calling, a greater pursuit than merely working as puppets to their personal feelings, or kowtowing to the Editorial policy of the media organ, or commercial interests, or their friends: Journalists rise above the frailty and flaws inherent in human nature to lift us with their words, stories, documentaries, features, pictures.
As much as Journalists perform a watchdog role, this serves the high ideal of conveying information to the powers that be of what needs fixing as we work to iron out the kinks and rough edges of our socio-economic development. Never should the Journalist embark on a crusade, subjecting the public space to personal agendas.
The Journalist who approaches his or her work with arrogance, pride, ego, seeking to satisfy his or her personal beliefs in covering stories, lacks the basic ethics of the profession.
There’s no place in the repertoire of the Journalist to engage in propaganda, revenge, vengeance, or public relations, or to crusade for a certain political, social, commercial or economic viewpoint, or to represent any socio-political interest whatsoever. The ultimate belief of the Journalist is in social justice, such stories told with objective professionalism.
The job of the Journalist does not in any way align with propagating subjective irrationalities. Rather, the job of the Journalist, the high, noble calling, is to steer clear of unfounded allegations, to insist on proof and evidence before publishing or broadcasting material that would influence the public mind.
The objective of the Journalist is to inspire and motivate the public to rise up and build our nation, to cause citizens to exercise personal responsibility in modern Guyana, to get citizens to play the role of their civic duty to engage in community transformation. The Journalist’s truth is not in tearing down society’s morale, but in lifting our nation to believe in ourselves. The Journalist converses with the people, the public mind, and in that conversation takes the lead, and so such a sacred role calls for a profound understanding of the professional ethics of the profession.
The Journalist, in other words, cannot afford to be wantonly irresponsible, cannot go about abusing the sacred trust of the public, in using scarce airwaves, bandwidth or print space to propagate personal insecurities, festering hatreds or narrow-minded self-interest.
GUYANESE MEDIA LANDSCAPE
The Guyanese media landscape today sees scores of high profile Journalists and Reporters wantonly disregard the noble ethics of the profession, insisting on filling the national social space with their own views and emotional irrationalities couched in reports, comments, editorials and features. This ugly deformation of Journalism especially plays out online, as many take to the unstructured social media landscape to vent their irrationalities.
Guyana today offers the ambitious, enterprising, professionally-minded, ethical Journalist the grand opportunity to shape the social space of our land, to walk with our people through the rice fields and cane lands and kitchen gardens, to sit with students in a class at the University of Guyana, to travel across the Pomeroon with farmers and community entrepreneurs, to walk the new roads of villages across Berbice and Essequibo and Linden, to showcase the contemporary Guyanese story.
The Journalist owes it to the Guyanese nation, as a reward for the profound privilege of his or her sacred access to the public space, this hallowed public trust, whether through TV, radio, the Internet or newspaper or magazine, to construct stories that lift our national soul, that motivate and inspire us to know what a blessed nation we are, what a truly paradisiac land we occupy as a nation.
Too many Journalists and Reporters fill the public mind with grotesque stories, deformed opinions and undefined questions. We see crime, gore and misery fill our airwaves and newspapers, and in fact the State newspaper took a policy to avoid demotivating the Guyanese nation with constant reports of front page crimes.
DEFACING THE PUBLIC SPACE
This is responsible Journalism in the State newspaper, because to take one crime, no matter how serious, and plaster it all over TV and radio and the Internet news sites and our national newspapers, is to deface the public space, taking one isolated criminal act and subjecting every single Guyanese with its horror and inhumanity. To stoop to such a low, Journalism itself becomes inhumane, inconsiderate and unethical.
The Journalist, in today’s free Guyanese media landscape, owns a great opportunity to exercise initiative, personal responsibility and enterprising ambition to become a national icon, a star on the social scene, not for personal grandeur, but to be able to play an influential, empowered, leadership role in shaping the public landscape and the social space.
Media technology today rewards the media practitioner who develops the essential life skills and professional ethics and story-telling expertise to design a personal brand in the public domain. Such a brand works to reward the Journalist for telling the evolving story of the people of this nation, a role that lifts the Guyanese from mundane plodding in routine rote, to aspirations of exciting personal development.
In traveling this stunning landscape to understand the Guyanese psyche, and creating inspiring stories to showcase the farmer aback of Parika to the length and breadth of the country, the Journalist designs and shapes and molds the public space. For the journalist who does not violate and abuse this sacred trust, it’s a noble, humbling, beautiful way to live and serve.

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