THE Stabroek News (SN) has replied to the Attorney-General’s (AG) letter accusing SN of ongoing political bias against the PPP and the Guyana Government. The particular issue that irked the AG was a SN editorial which gave Justice Gino Persaud’s side of the quarrel with the AG and not a word of the AG’s response.
At the bottom of the AG’ letter, SN carried an editorial note in which it chastised the AG for relying on columns I have done accusing SN of shameless embrace of anti-government ranting. So yesterday (Saturday), SN gave its Saturday man the latitude to reply to the AG.
I did respond to the editorial note in two columns (see August 7 and 8). The Saturday man repeated that the paper will not accept ad hominen attacks by a writer without telling readers what is an ad hominen attack. I opined in my two columns that a paper can mask its unprofessional conduct by simply claiming it cannot publish comments from state official because they are ad hominen insults. I am contending that when learned people like Dr. Randy Persaud and Joel Bhagwandin expose anti-government critics, and the Guyanese nation gain knowledge from such an exposure, SN refuses to carry the people’s adumbrations.
Now let’s look at the ad hominen attacks from the Saturday man.
1-Saturday, November 11, 2023: “In the incessant housing drive, the gullible is brainwashed into thinking that home-ownership equates to social mobility.”
2-Saturday, January 13, 2024; “The oil money has gone to the heads of PPP leaders and convinced them that they are genius. What they really are is plain lucky because of oil.”
3-Saturday, February 3, 2024: “The PPP governs a poorly managed, lawless and filthy country cursed with poverty.”
4-Saturday, March 16, 2024: “It is hard not to feel helpless at how little PPP leaders listen, since we can expect the ruling party will use our taxes to ensure they win another five years majority rule.”
Saturday, August 10, 2024 (which is yesterday): “Journalism shines a bright light on the dangers to democratic norms.”
Let’s look at what journalism has become in the year 2024. Let’s quote Barack Obama. Asked about what keeps him late at night, Obama told CBS: “The thing that I’m most worried about is the degree to which we now have a divided conversation, in part because we have a divided media, a splintered media. Today what I’m most concerned about is the fact that, because of the splintering of the media, we almost occupy different realities, right?”
A New York Times-Siena College poll published in October last year found 59 percent of voters view the media as a “major threat to democracy,” while 25 percent said the press is a “minor threat.” The annual Gallup survey also published in the same month last year found only 34 percent of Americans believe major news organisations will report “fully, accurately and fairly” on current events.
Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults say the news media is increasing political polarization in the US, and just under half say they have little to no trust in the media’s ability to report the news fairly and accurately, according to a new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization. The result of the survey was released in May of this year.
In Guyana since 2020, it seems we are returning to an evil period in newspaper history – the period in which the newspapers were in open political hostilities against the PPP government from 1957 to 1964. By some strange, twisted logic, Guyana is returning there.
For those too young to remember, three newspapers played a huge role in destabilising the Cheddi Jagan premiership in the first half of the 1960s- the privately owned Chronicle, Argosy and Evening Post.
In Chile, at the beginning of the 1970s, El Mercurio newspaper played a crucial role in the military overthrow of the Allende Government. It is stupid and downright idiotic to think that institutions like journalism, politics and religion cannot stray from their fundamental values and endanger the stability of a country.
Do you know who the Fox News counterpart in Guyana is? Do you know who the counterpart of El Mercurio in Guyana is? Do you know who the new Argosy is in Guyana? Do you know who the new Evening Post is in Guyana? If you don’t know, you haven’t been reading the Stabroek News. Finally, do you know who the Saturday man is? Former Prime Minister pointed him out to me when he was in the GUARD movement in the 1990s. Mr. Hinds told me in an email exchange that this man told his GUARD colleagues that East Indians were not culturally suited to govern Guyana.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.