ANY columnist will tell you, without exception, that they prepared their piece, go and exercise or walk the dog, come home to have breakfast with the wife and then read the newspapers. After reading the newspapers, the piece they prepared to send to the editor is changed. Something catches your eyes and a new article is born.

Today’s submission should have been a very brief history on the rise and fall of Aubrey Norton. I completed it, laid it down until I returned from the National Park to send it after breakfast. But I read the morning’s newspapers and came across a letter by the dye-in-the wool anti-government hater, Emile Mervin. I grasped the opportunity to do this piece here after I read what Mervin wrote.

After bashing the government without any mention of how the PNC, under the new leader, David Granger along with the WPA and the AFC failed the Guyanese people. Mervin wrote in the very last paragraph of his correspondence, the following words: “In my next letter, I will focus on the vital role of the local media in helping to educate and inform Guyanese about their rights and roles as citizens.”

One should be harsh in one’s response to Mervin because of his appalling foolishness. Which country is Mervin talking about? If it is Guyana, which media house is he talking about? Let’s dismiss Demerara Waves, in which anti-government thrash is a quotidian feature from GHK Lall. And we all know who is a huge financier of Demerara Waves (DW).

He penned a letter in the Stabroek News saying he knows the three businessmen who built my home.

But did he write about how he got the golden opportunity to become the chairman of the Gold Board? And the goose did lay the golden egg for GHK Lall when the Board was full of gold.

Is this the** media house that Mervin thinks educates Guyanese about their rights? What about the rights of Guyanese to know about Mr. Lall’s golden seat at the Gold Board?

Only a fool, in 2024 when the press has gone far deep in the cesspool of anti-propaganda, would say that the press educates the Guyanese people. Is Mervin talking about Kaieteur News (KN)? I wrote for the Kaieteur News for 30 years, and Mervin has to be in the same category of questionable minds as Mr. Glen Lall’s to say that KN informs the Guyanese nation.

No rational person following social progress in Guyana would include KN as a newspaper that educates the nation. To make such a statement tells us a lot about the state of mind of Mervin. This is a newspaper in which three journalists left and went public about directions they received to fictionalise stories about oil.

I have no respect (it is my right to say who I respect) for people like Mervin. If I did, I would have educated him about my 30-year-old experience at KN. Obviously, one will ask, then why I stayed. I wanted to write to educate people, so I admit I am guilty of tolerating degenerate journalism at KN, the worst you can find at any newspaper. It is never too late to apologise.

Does Mervin read KN? For the past four years, every headline on a daily basis has been on oil. When there isn’t anything to write about oil in Guyana, KN writes about oil in other countries. Mervin must know that before the Ali administration’s first term ends in 2025, KN will do a lead story on oil in Timbuktu. Today, KN’s circulation is under 2,000 daily. Down from 20,000 in 2019.

So which paper educates and informs Guyanese? Aah! Mervin probably means Stabroek News (SN). But, again, I will refer to Mervin as a sucker for believing so. Someone needs to educate Mervin about the daily anti-government bashing on the premiership of Cheddi Jagan in the 1960s by a newspaper, the Daily Argosy, edited by a Portuguese businessman, Peter Taylor.

The SN, since the PPP returned to power, has made Taylor look like a saint. Taylor didn’t like Jagan and the PPP government, but there was more professional journalism in the Argosy than what currently obtains in the SN. Each year, 362 editorials in SN take the form of daily ranting against the government.

The co-owner of SN, Isabelle DeCaires, ran down the clothes the president wore. The very co-owner signed a group letter advising the government to get out of oil production because fossil fuel emissions kill African people. Mervin calls such miasmic journalism educating the nation. Mervin, please write about the US where you live and leave us here in Guyana in peace.