FROM today through to December 31, I am going to continue in the vein of assessing people, places and events and wait until Sunday January 1, 2024 to assess the old year both in Guyana and the world. Beginning from the new year, I will also reflect on my columns of 2023 that I consider the most important.

My wife is a trained chemical engineer. So my daughter went to UG to do chemistry but after graduation, switched interest. She did two Masters, one in International Journalism offering a thesis on the Guyana 2020 election and the role of the media and a related Masters in literature. The journalism thing appeared natural because she grew up with her father spending a lifetime in journalism.

There have been countless hours spent with her instructing her on the priceless foundations on which rest the very nature of journalism. She grew up knowing Father Andrew Morrison more closely than any other non-family members. I took her quite often to the office of Father Morrison. When he wrote his book, “Justice: The Struggle for Democracy in Guyana, 1952-1992,” he autographed it for her.

Journalism along with medicine and teaching are three immensely important functions in the life of the world. I hope my daughter embraces all the sacred principles of journalism and I have not a scintilla of doubt that she will. I had the best experience as a Guyanese in journalism working with valuable editors at all the major newspapers. My journalistic idol is Father Andrew Morison of the Catholic Standard. My lowest moment has been with the editor of Kaieteur News, Adam Harris.

I grew up in the ethereal era of golden journalism in the 1970s when the Catholic Standard and the Caribbean Contact were a breath-taking journey into the journalism of courage, fierce independence, manifest accountability and moral endurance. Today, global journalism, since the Israeli genocide in Gaza, has become an exercise in incredible moral shamelessness. Today, American journalism threatens the very fabric of American society.

In Guyana, journalism has descended to a level where it could be argued that it has become saturated with anti-government hate and there are conspicuous shades of moral debauchery never before seen in this country except in the 1960s, when the CIA used the media as part of a Western conspiracy to topple the elected Cheddi Jagan government.

The paper that exceeded shameless anti-government frenzy in those days was The Argosy. In an atavistic return to the Argosy, the two private newspapers of Kaieteur News and the Stabroek News, have gone in anti-government directions that should shock to the core anyone who belongs to the journalism of the 1970s and 1980s.

One of the rallying cries of the anti-government media is accountability from government. It is not a rallying cry only; it is an obsession. The anti-government media refuses to accept that society goes nowhere and will become brittle if accountability is not accepted as a priceless value that holds civilisation together. Accountability is a value that inheres in the social contract between citizens themselves and not only between governed and governor.

The great philosopher, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, and the superb 20th century philosopher, John Rawles placed emphasis on the role of accountability in society, meaning among people not only among the state and its subjects.

The brilliant Indian philosopher, Amartya Sen did a fantastic job taking Rawle’s philosophy to its logical conclusion in his fantastic book, THE IDEA OF JUSTICE, Harvard University Press, Boston, 2009. This is a book any one that is interested in saving modern civilisation should read.

What is taking place in Guyana in journalism today is the journalism of The Argosy in the 1960s and the journalism of Fox News in the US and The Telegraph in London, UK.

In my column of Thursday, July 27, 2023, titled, “Definition of accountability,” I wrote the following; “…the media has to be accountable to the people of Guyana just like any other institution including the government.” What we have in Guyana, is a media landscape so arrogant, bombastic and unaccountable that Guyanese society interested in saving itself has a moral duty to confront. It once I have a pen and a voice, I will do so.

The Demerara Waves gave prominent coverage to the WPA’s condemnation of President Ali’s performance in the St. Vincent talks. Who or what is the WPA? It is a two-man outfit that has no physiology. The Stabroek News gave prominence to the same view point by the WPA but refused to carry the letters of Guyana’s leading financial analyst – Joel Bhagwandin.

The internal election of the Guyana Press Association in 2023 was one of the biggest disgraces in the history of Guyanese journalism. Mr. Anand Persaud, editor of the Stabroek News refused to name its board of directors. Is that accountability?