Covering the Caribbean in World News Beyond Regional Barriers, Borders, Boundaries and Blockades

CARIBBEAN reporters and journalists today, like everywhere, have access to the widest sources of information available to humankind — and ditto everyone else with the devices for ready access to the Internet (which varies per country), resulting in the ultimate aim of reporters being not necessarily repeating what everyone else might have seen, but being the first to report something new.

But it all depends on the individual levels of interest, driven by where reporters stand on the issues, how far they’ll go to cover the big story — or just ignore it completely.
The big issues facing the Caribbean today aren’t the favourite topics of the region’s mainstream and social media.

Inescapable issues such as the Ukraine War, COVID-19, climate change, environment and energy still get much more coverage across the Caribbean than issues commanding global attention, such as CARICOM’s call for reparations from Europe for Slavery and Native Genocide.

Or the race by one side in the Ukraine conflict to deepen the CARICOM split from within by tilting the seven-seven vote at the last United Nations General Assembly to one where one side can claim it has CARICOM support by virtue of the simple majority.

The unprecedented move by 14 independent CARICOM nations eight years ago to jointly call for reparations and to establish a CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC) have had ripple effects of tidal wave dimensions on both sides of The Atlantic.

The 2013 CARICOM move encouraged the birth two years later of the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC), itself born out of the first US Summit on Reparations in 2015 and attended by the likes of HR-40 champion Congressman John Conyers, and fellow veteran civil rights campaigner Rev Jesse Jackson and celebrated black actor Danny Glover.

The HR-40 Bill had advanced in the US Congress like never before and the reparations issue became such a hot topic among African Americans ahead of the 2016 presidential elections that every Democratic Party candidate vying to be the nominee for the presidency had to spell-out their position on reparations.

George Floyd’s murder and the resulting Black Lives Matter movement further boosted the US reparations movement to unimaginable proportions and is today continuing the struggle of the Black Power movement that got its name from Trinidad & Tobago’s Stokely Carmichael in the late 1960s and led in great part too by Malcolm X, whose mother was Grenadian.

That movement further grew into the felling of statues of figures associated with slavery across the US and across the Atlantic in the UK, as well as in Barbados, where Lord Nelson’s statue was laid down after standing in the middle of Bridgetown for over 200 years, despite him never having set foot on the island.

Less than a year later Barbados – ‘Little England’ which had a British Parliament before Westminster – kicked the British monarchy and became a republic, starting a movement that’s seen leaders of at least six other CARICOM member-states indicating they’re ready or willing to join Dominica, Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago and Barbados.

The Black Vote continues to be key in US elections and with the midterm polls only six months away, President Biden has appointed the first Black White House Press Secretary, a Caribbean woman born in Martinique, who’s been Deputy Press Secretary since he took office, but the American press presented on Thursday as “the first openly gay and LBGTQ person to hold the post.”

From Bill Clinton’s Attorney-General, William Holder (of Barbadian descent) to Tony Blair’s Attorney- General Dame Patricia Scotland (of Dominican parentage), Caribbean roots have helped shape American and British societies, just like Bermuda’s Alexander Hamilton did in the USA, Saint Lucia’s Sir Arthur Lewis did in Ghana (under Kwame Nkrumah) and Dominica’s Sir Telford Georges became the first Chief Justice of Tanzania.
Likewise, Sidney Poitier was born in The Bahamas and Cicely Tyson’s parents were from Anguilla, but that much was not well-known across the region about the two great American actors until old age led to their news stories being about sickness or death.

Unfortunately, such information just isn’t generally known by today’s generation of reporters anywhere and the generational effect isn’t only a Caribbean thing.
It’s the same in The Philippines, where the majority of voters were born after President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda were forced into exile and social media have successfully sanitised their son and make him the next President, with the daughter of outgoing President Duterte as Vice-President, facilitating the electoral marriage of two of the most powerful Filipino families to access, regain and retain absolute political power – by the ballot box.

Likewise in Sri Lanka, where members of the powerful Rajapaksa family were elected as President and Prime Minister and are now being pressured to resign over declined economic circumstances.
But the majority of Filipino voters today say they weren’t around when the Marcos’ committed their crimes; and Sri Lankans opposed to the Rajapaksas refuse to hear anything about external factors causing their internal economic problems.

Same in France a fortnight ago, where the enduring right-wing Le Pen family has contested for the presidency in the last three elections and came out stronger than ever in the last April 24 race because of the level of opposition to President Macron’s policies.

Same in the UK, where the local government election results earlier this week didn’t smell like a bed of roses for Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Tory party.
In all these cases, as with President Biden’s decision this week to give his voice a Black Caribbean face, journalists cover these events only insofar as their interests (in the issues) drive them.
But, as always, it all has to do with the extent to which the new crop of journalists and reporters everywhere in the world today are prepared to follow issues beyond national borders and boundaries.