IT is so often the case, both in the print and in the electronic media, that information that promotes national development gets bypassed in favour of sensational and bizarre reports.
This “dog-bites-man” approach to news seems much more preferable by the private media and is no doubt helpful from a marketing perspective. Development Support Communication is often ignored, especially by so-called “independent” media outlets in preference to those that are sensational.

This observation was made by President Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali during a recent interview on Trinidad and Tobago’s CNC3 Morning Brew, during which he criticised what he referred to as a historical trap focused on corruption narratives in developing countries.

President Ali lamented the fact that rapid economic growth in developing countries is often overshadowed by assumptions of mismanagement.
“Whenever a country is doing well, especially a developing country, you will hear “your system is porous, there will be corruption or leakages,” but when you hear in the developed world that the country is growing by eight or nine per cent, some of our own journalists in the region use that as an example,” the President said.

President Ali could not have been more correct. We do not have to look far to see how development stories are being treated by the independent media. For the most part, such stories are either ignored, or if at all covered, are given only scant coverage. It is left to the state media to pick up, as it were, the slack.

Yet developments, especially of a transformational nature, impact directly on the quality of life of people and as such are deserving of much more prominence than what is being provided by the private media. The construction of a new school or a state-of-the-art hospital has national implications and by any account is newsworthy. Yet many such stories are ignored by some sections of the media.

As pointed out by President Ali, it is time to change the media mindset among journalists and reporters, both at the national and international levels. Only recently President Ali had cause to correct a popular BBC journalist of “HARDtalk,” when he sought to misrepresent some salient aspects of our domestic situation.

The fact is that that such a mindset is often the result of preconceived notions that developing nations cannot effectively manage rapid economic growth and are, therefore, vulnerable to exposure of one kind or the other.

In the case of Guyana, measures are in place to mitigate such exposure and modernise governance through a variety of measures, including digitisation and transparency. Indeed, much progress has already been made in terms of electronic governance with a view to align it with global technological shifts and enhanced democratic governance.

President, Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali and the PPP/C administration must be commended for their visionary and forward-thinking initiatives of bringing government to the people and vice versa through the use of cutting-edge technologies and enhanced governance systems.