LEGENDARY media consultant Kit Nascimento’s recent response to selective, unwarranted criticism of the professionalism of his handling of President, Dr Irfaan Ali’s recent press conference reminded me of the oft-repeated saying that “The more things change, the more they remain the same….”

A past-master at well-explaining anything he says, does or defends, Kit offered facts and figures to show that the representatives of the complaining media units and entities were simply crying crocodile tears in an alligator-infested river.

Carelessly adopting metropolitan TV news reporters’ penchant to shout and ask anything anywhere and anytime, some reporters expressed grievance about allegedly being disallowed to ignore the subject at hand to instead ask the President of the Republic unrelated questions of their choice, about a recurring matter endlessly addressed elsewhere for the previous fortnight.

But I quite understood the patented Nascimento pokes — and subsequent drives over the boundary — of the very slow, powder-puff balls bowled at him by the day’s usual suspects in the President’s “20-over” press conference that went into extra time.

Opposition parties and reporters languishing in the wilderness often hide behind invisible rights and freedoms, or simply create stories to suit their political leaders’ or editors’ pre-determined narratives or headlines.

This is so everywhere: reporters simply attend press conferences to try and fish for the sauciest stories in the name of ‘Breaking News’ or offering the proverbial “other perspective.”
In efforts to remain relevant, they more easily rely on creating fantasies from not-so-fertile imaginations, even praying their expectations for eventually uncovering gubernatorial negatives will be fast-tracked by Fate, in some cases behaving like homicide figures are mere numbers and don’t represent human beings and families.

Guyana is reporting reductions in serious gun crime, but, unable to survive alone on a desert island of relevancy, opposition critics are clinging on, for dear life, to the recent political demise of an ex-government minister.

And just as that matter started seeming like a molehill of mountainous proportions to the government’s opponents and loudest critics, up came an even-saucier set of fishy allegations fingered in the direction of the government, but without pointing.

A supposedly well-respected international media house last week published online an article quoting nameless persons and groups of invisible and supposedly reliable but untraceable sources, making scurrilous allegations, without any proof offered, about owners of a private US-based company doing business in Guyana.

Clearly intended to cast serious aspersions by silently hinting in the government’s direction, the team of contributing writers ensured that the article was pregnant with wilful, malicious innuendo intended to malign and intentionally create doubts about the targeted business persons’ ties with Guyana.

As per usual, this article will be grabbed-on-to by the government’s critics at home and abroad with the urgency of a political life-saving jacket, but here again, the emphasis is more on form instead of content, on implied allegations instead of absence of verifiable facts.

As per usual, as well, this increasing tendency by international media houses to hide behind pure speculation by quoting un-named and invisible ‘reliable sources’ has gone boundless, thanks to the acceleration of competition in the IT and AI ages.

Consequently, while focusing on trying to ensure that AI is used ‘For Good’, governments and courts are also paying more catch-up attention today to the increasing trends of media houses escaping culpability for sharing calculated fabrications and untruths, due to a now-disproven earlier proclaimed inability to monitor the whole ‘world wide web.’

Increasing attention is being paid in the UK and Western Europe, for instance, to issues such as social media culpability for defamation, with courts redefining defamation by suggesting or ruling that publishers and platforms posting or hosting defamatory online posts should be liable for consideration as legally guilty (of defamation).

Governments haven’t gone that far, even though the European Union (EU) has lately slapped heavy fines on transnational IT operators for violating continental privacy laws.

As the current major strikes by US screen actors and writers is showing, streaming services are also often used to deny proper earnings, with unions now asking whether defamation is applicable to live streaming.

And there’s the narrowing gap between legal liability of traditional print and broadcasting media houses in a limited space determined by readership, listenership and viewership, when one can stream truth and lies today to the world with similar ease.

Clearly, the need is to actually close the gap between what existing aged media laws allow for and the excesses that escape legal scrutiny in the absence of specified legislation.

In a recent Saint Lucia case, a fabricated story targeting a reputable local bank, falsely purporting to be a screen shot of an article by a reputable local online news agency, was heavily-circulated and widely-shared at home and abroad by several free online service providers.

The bank and the media house were/are able to prove the fictitious nature of the post and its intent to negatively influence the bank’s shareholders and customers, but the legal fraternity is (not surprisingly) split on whether local courts can oblige international online media entities to declare the author(s) of the intentionally misleading and fabricated post(s).

Same with the Guyana government’s supposed inability to challenge the veracity of a clearly-concocted story with no traceable sources, undoubtedly intended to cast dark shadows over a country where oil and gas ensure that light prevails in brighter and wider proportions by the day, week and month.

But is that really so?

Those who felt Guyana lacked the technical brains to run its own energy business successfully have arisen to several rude awakenings.

It mustn’t be felt, therefore – despite recent proof — that Guyana lacks the legal brain power to take global legal and media goliaths to task on matters of interpretation and definition of right and wrong.

And even though things can occasionally still tend to remain the same despite changes, it’s also true that “Change is the only constant” — and therefore, in itself, guaranteed to never, ever remain the same!