THE Kaieteur News, Guyana’s premier print organ of grand sensationalism, distortion and lies, all in the name of a programme of daily assault on the progressive government of the PPP/C, on Wednesday evening delivered another display of a trait that has also become one of its standard bearer’s description – hypocrisy. On that evening, hard working members of staff of the Government Information Agency (GINA) held a candle light vigil east of Public Buildings in protest of the vengeful cuts to their subvention, via a joint opposition motion.
That cut has, in effect, placed the entire 38 staff of that agency on the breadline, as it is not an entity that generates its own income as the NCN, another state owned communications centre also affected by the same parliamentary action.
Such a gathering would most naturally attract the attention of all the private media houses whose numbers were there, inclusive of a KN staffer who was taking photographs. Such is a journalist’s right, as any other media worker, in a country where freedom of the press abounds.
Expecting that such a story about a groundbreaking event would have been carried in Kaieteur News on the following day, as it has been done in all the other dailies, lo and behold this newspaper has not.
Every Guyanese would be aware of, and understand, KN’s culture of reporting: they carry virtually every public event imaginable. So why not one of great political significance, that has opened a groundswell of economic uncertainty, for not only GINA and NCN staff, but also those from the Office of the President – all workers.
Is it not very strange that such is omitted from its Thursday’s edition? Is this news organ afraid or, perhaps, embarrassed of the grossly inconsiderate, inhumane, and anti-working class behaviour of its political opposition colleagues who it has supported hook, line and sinker, and whose anti-working class act has just brought uncertainty to the future livelihood of about 300 state media workers?
This is shocking, particularly, for a journal that has continuously projected itself as public defender and watch dog, among other lofty ideals. If it is really such a media, then apart from reporting on the event of Wednesday evening’s vigil, it would have also roundly condemn such a politically unconscionable act, perpetrated by its opposition friends, on a group of workers, who belong to the same fraternity as its own staff.
How does this media house explain this glaring, selective, biased and prejudiced and even unprofessional behaviour on its part?