Submitted by Yardbroom
The late great American writer Walter Lippmann said:
“The journalist’s role was to inform the public of what the elite’s were doing. It was also to act as a watchdog over the elites, as the public had the final say with their votes”.
Within the above framework, ” journalism’s first obligation is to tell the truth”.
Why should journalists inform us: ” because an informed public is the only one that can correctly assess whether the society it inhabits is going off the rails”.
Perhaps I should say at the outset, this article has no political polemic, it is not for or against the BLP or DLP. This should not be necessary, but regrettably a few of us, see every discourse through a narrow focus of political allegiance.
I put it to you, that a few too many of the major decisions, which have been taken in Barbados recently, were to the disadvantage of its citizens; and they possibly would not have been taken, had the electorate been better informed. There was not the rigorous examination of proposals in the News Media, one would expect. A couple projects, costing many millions of dollars were not properly examined, and because it was expedient not to “analyse” but to quietly “report” on what had been agreed, the almost empty cupboard, spewed out dollars with a haste that bordered on the obscene.
To be blunt the public were not “informed”, in the journalistic sense.
Without rigorous examination, journalists acquiesced to what history had taught them was a fait accompli. The public accustomed to no more, accepted what they saw, as the engine turned in the background spewing tax payers dollars to the wind.
I mentioned earlier that a “journalist’s first obligation is the truth.” However, I am not so cavalier in my thinking not to understand the shackles of restraint placed upon journalists in Barbados. It is possible for a journalist who tries to be objective, for the public good, to be stymied, by no more than a phone call, from one of the elites to a well placed person.
Under these circumstances, we must understand a journalist has an obligation to the public, but he/she has a bigger commitment to his/her family. On a small island where opportunities in the News Media are few, some would say it is not bravery to challenge the status quo, but stupidity. Therefore, I seek not to lay blame but examine the situation, to discover why things are the way they are.
Major events that relate to Barbados and its citizens, can happen – sometimes abroad – be discussed abroad, settled and scarcely have a footnote in the local media. It is as if they never occurred. Particularly galling, is that should some poor soul be brave enough to mention such an event, they are dismissively told……it is of no importance to Barbados. Millions of dollars could be involved, hundreds of millions, it matters not. This is not to argue the merits of the case either way, but simply to ask was it newsworthy? and should the general population be informed of such events.
The veracity of what I write, can be confirmed by fellow bloggers here, who no doubt wonder as I do, why no investigative journalism? Dare I suggest, that the point made by Walter Lippmann that “the journalists role was to inform the public of what the elite’s were doing,” is as relevant in Barbados as in any other democracy.
Perhaps they know of the unwritten and unsaid code, by which some journalists live in Barbados. It is so inbred in the system that it has not got to be written down or spoken aloud. It is just there, like an elephant in the room and everyone pretending it cannot be seen. They know the rubric under which they are expected to operate.
How does this failure impact on society, to its disadvantage? A typical example, someone comes to Barbados from the far North, he asserts he is starting a new venture, a score or more jobs are expected, funds become available, his mere “presence” secures that. No one checks in his hometown in the North, to ascertain his business footprint there. Has he satisfactorily completed similar ventures there? has he been found guilty of fraud or similar misdemeanours? Three years down the road he is in trouble, people are owed money and he is away back to the North. A simple bit of investigative journalism would have discovered a charlatan, no! we have been conned again. . . . and the wheel grinds mercilessly on.
It is not for me, neither is it for “paid” journalists to tell others what to think, “but we must give them the unvarnished truth, so that decisions are made with a factual background.
The time has surely come, for journalists in Barbados to explore new avenues to discover facts, so that the Barbados public are better informed, and can therefore question decisions taken in their name, and save hard earned tax dollars. If they fail to act, taxpayers’ money will be constantly frittered away, and many more grandiose Taj Mahals and other such hair-brained schemes will not be challenged, as the nefarious activities of the elite trundle on unabated, while the money spreading machine’s wheels grind mercilessly on in the face of an uninformed public.
The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.