Throwing stones
WE DO not want to get into a slanging match with the public and media relations consultants to the Guyana Airways 2000 (GA2000) airline. GA2000 is, after all, a national airline and its successes ought to be a joy for all Guyanese. The Guyana Government also owns 49 per cent of the airline, and the problems of GA2000 ought too to be a matter of concern for all Guyanese. We have been in the forefront of the upbeat media stories about the airline since its launching last year and cannot be accused of malice against GA2000. The record is there - we followed the negotiations from the bidding for the takeover of the Guyana Airways Corporation (GAC) through to the signing of the deal and the subsequent media hype about the new firm taking to the skies. At some sacrifice too, we released staff to cover the inaugural flights and have been following the airline's bid to carve a niche for itself in a highly competitive industry. We try as much as possible to report the positive things but as a responsible national newspaper we cannot neglect the negatives and tell our readers everything's bright and beautiful when it's not. We do not manufacture the news - we try to report it as accurately and as fairly as possible. There may be times when little things can be blown out of proportion to create attention-getting headlines - something called sensationalism in media language. But a discerning public quickly catches on to such cheap sales gimmicks and those indulging in the practice soon lose their credibility, if they had any in the first place. We have been more than fair to GA2000 and when we reported last week that it was encountering problems, it was not with malice. It was a story we had been working on for almost two weeks and we published it after we eventually got confirmation that the airline was indeed in some problems. The day our story was published, Chairman of the GA2000 Board of Directors, Mr Yesu Persaud, summoned a briefing of editors and announced that the airline was experiencing difficult times because of market and other conditions but was not in crisis. We duly reported that and followed up with another story last week about the enthusiastic response from travel agents and others here and in the United States and Canada about the proposal to have the airline go public with shares for sale to other investors. As fate would have it, the airline's aircraft ran into technical problems Friday night and was forced, after takeoff, to return to the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, Timehri. As we reported, the press release from the consultants said that "because of a safety warning requiring the isolation and shutdown of the left engine", the aircraft "returned to the airport at 00:15 hrs making a safe single engine landing." As we reported, the release said it was later determined that the safety warning system had malfunctioned. Our headline the next day said `Engine trouble delays GA2000 flight' and a release issued Sunday by the GA2000 public relations consultants lambastes us for making "a number of statements and assertions which are wholly unfounded and irresponsible". It may not technically have been engine trouble, but an engine is shut down, the aircraft heads back to the airport on one engine, lands in such a way that its brakes and tyres are affected and replacements have to be flown in, and we are accused of making "unfounded" statements. Maybe, we should have said bad weather conditions over the Atlantic had delayed the flight. We also did not do like other media houses and report only what the airline issued in its press release. We went on Saturday to the GA2000 office, spoke with passengers who were delayed, reported what they said and we are accused of being "erroneous and irresponsible". We even reported that passengers "agreed that while the problem with the aircraft was something that happened to most airlines, the issue was that they were not getting proper feedback from the GA2000 staff on what was going on." Yet we are dubbed "irresponsible". We have no malicious intent against GA2000 but it must also appreciate that, like us, it has no control over what makes news.
|