PART four on the rise and fall of the Stabroek News (SN) was carried on February 26, 2026.
Other dimensions in the SN’s sordid journalism and the praise of SN by some quarters must not be allowed to go without a rebuttal because the silence allows for the destruction of Guyana’s historiography.
I repeat for the third time, two of the shocking distortions of Guyana’s history in relation to SN. The first is the statement from anti-oil critic, Janet Bulkan that the then editor of SN, Mr. Anand Persaud, was the most consequential citizen Guyana produced since the late 20th century.
Every Guyanese wherever they are must have experienced a sense of deep revulsion at that statement. I worked with all the great editors in all the major newspapers in this country and I have about 58 years of social activism, and I can tell you that is the most ignorant statement to come out of the mouth of a person that was born in Guyana.
I don’t consider Ms. Bulkan a person of consequence so her expression of ignorance could be dismissed but Mr. Ralph Ramkarran is someone of importance. He has fought with the PPP for free and fair elections following in his father’s footstep.
For Mr. Ramkarran to say that “… the restoration of democracy in 1992 and its survival in 2020 would not have been possible without the Stabroek News,” is beyond belief.
In the past 10 years what was the role of the SN? I read people saying that the paper allowed free thought and open debate. This is misleading.
The SN was anti-intellectual. The only open debate SN encouraged was designed to do two things – put the PPP and its government under focus and to avoid discussing issues that the SN found too dear to it to allow for a free exchange of intellectual ideas.
Open the SN on any day and only the PPP was discussed. Martin Carter is one of the sacred altars in the editorial edifice of SN.
When the MI6 files were made public and Carter might have been the informant MI6 given the code name, Lascar, SN never printed any letter or viewpoint on that section of Guyanese history. It just didn’t exist for SN.
Ravi Dev is a highly rated intellectual. His two letters on the political role of Rupert Roopnaraine were rejected. Both items appeared as columns in the Guyana Times and the young generation of Guyana needs to read them because they need to know these things.
What important debate SN allowed? Nigel Westmaas of the Mulatto/Creole class which SN embodied wrote: “No other newspaper has devoted as much space to such a wide variety of journalistic content while consistently integrating historical material into matters of public interest.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. SN’s interest in saturating historical material into the cloth of public knowledge was highly skewed.
Let’s give just one example then look at the sacred cows of SN’s journalism that made the newspaper a despicable threat to Guyana’s historiography.
Here is the caption SN gave to a letter by Baytoram Ramarack of September 22, 2024: “Janet Jagan showed little interest in Indian history and culture.” Those are the journalistic contents that SN wanted to expose the Guyanese nation to.
Of course, Ramharack was entitled to explore the politics of Janet Jagan. But SN never gave other polemicists the opportunity to contribute to Guyanese history. Dev’s take on Roopnaraine was rejected. Any take on the sordid political role of the Guyana Human Rights Association did not find space in the SN.
Red Thread was a sacred cow. So was Chris Ram. So was the Alliance For Change. So was the journalistic role of David DeCaires and Miles Fitzpatrick. I end with examples that I hope to add to my country’s history. SN contacted me for a comment as to whether I stole books from the National Library.
I told them yes. Subsequently, I wrote a letter to SN about the criminal conviction of Rex Mc Kay for stealing a box of bicycle tubes when he was an employee of Booker Garage. I named the date of the publication of the item in the Guiana Graphic. It was never carried.
Seven times the paper editorialised that Vincent Adams should not have been removed as head of the EPA after the PPP came into power in 2020. But Michael Khan was removed as head of the Georgetown Hospital and Mark Ramotar as editor of the Chronicle when APNU+AFC came to power.
SN said not a word about what happened to these two men. An audit by the APNU+AFC government cleared Khan of any wrongdoing. I’m glad SN is dead. Its continuation was a threat to Guyana’s historiography.

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.