IT continues to disturb me that the media in Guyana are not held to high standards and practices but are allowed to operate with a high degree of unprofessionalism and mediocrity. The print medium readily comes to mind, led by the Kaieteur News. In journalism, conjecture is left for editorials and opinion columns. News is presented based on facts. The opinion of the journalist/editor has no place in a news report. This principle is noticeably absent from the practice of journalism in Guyana.

The Kaieteur News in particular continues to carry opinion pieces masquerading as news. The newspaper, in its ongoing campaign against the government, places a spin on every event and activity in an attempt to attack/embarrass the government. However, it must be noted that this despicable practice is not limited to government alone but has been adopted as the standard operating procedure for reporting news in general.

Just Thursday last the paper carried a report captioned ‘Drunk driver kills City Council worker’. The basis for concluding the driver was drunk remains a mystery, except for an eyewitness who expressed the opinion that the man may have been drunk. The Kaieteur News then proceeded to blaze the headline across its page that the man was drunk. The reader is still uninformed about the action of the police, if a breathalyzer test was done and what was the result. This is of no importance to the Kaieteur News.

Then on Friday December 10, another caption read; ‘Sixth witness testifies at Neesa Gopaul murder PI’. Reading the report, all that was mentioned were the names of those who testified, and the prosecutor. The content and nature of the actual testimony and its impact on the outcome of the PI remains a mystery.

On Friday again, another report dealt with an accident at the Rose Hall Nursery School. The accident in which a car drove into the school building, occurred some 24 hours before the report was published, yet at the time of writing, the journalist/editor could not ascertain who was driving the vehicle and was contented enough to state that it was ‘reportedly’ driven by a police officer. A call to the police for confirmation/denial of this was probably a task for rocket scientists and as such could not be undertaken by mere journalists.

It is time we hold our newspapers to higher standards. This backward and unprofessional brand of journalism that is often libelous and scandalous in nature must be condemned and rejected at all costs.