Manning's hurt, Cro Cro's 'Reality'
By Rickey Singh
Guyana Chronicle
February 2, 2004
PRIME Minister Patrick Manning may have missed a good opportunity to show an even hand when he went on the offensive last Saturday against local journalists for abusing media freedom by perceived irresponsible and mischievous reporting.
He could equally have referred also - unless it 'slipped his mind' - to the current raging controversy over what is a clear case of abuse of freedom of expression at a time of national agony over kidnapping crimes.
Yes, I am alluding to 'Cro Cro's 'Face Reality', as yet another sad example of the gross misuse of the calypso as a medium of social commentary.
I happened to be in Port-of-Spain watching the evening news last Saturday that included coverage of Prime Minister Manning's verbal onslaught against the media as he enumerated some startling cases of gross misreporting that reflected very poorly on his leadership and judgement.
His angry, finger-pointing outburst in citing his examples of irresponsible journalism - and by extension an abuse of freedom of the media - reminded me of his predecessor, Basdeo Panday, who had his own clashes with the local media while in office over claimed "lies, half truths and innuendoes".
Then, Manning was warning party and country that Panday was on "a mission to destroy press freedom in Trinidad and Tobago".
Last Saturday he was urging his PNM supporters, gathered for the party's 48th anniversary celebration at the Lions Civic Centre, not to be silent but to rise to his and the government's defence.
He pledged his administration's readiness to provide his party supporters with "ammunition to discharge that responsibility".
His political opponents and media critics need not get excited over the loaded word "ammunition". I am inclined to think that the Prime Minister had "information" on his mind and not to cause any physical harm; or displacements at the work place for the guilty media personnel.
Media Freedom
Yet, one cannot help observing how attitudes change with changes in government. The cynics may say, in reflecting on verbal onslaughts against the media that often come from politicians, how the more things change, the more they remain the same. Then, Panday; now Manning.
However, let us neither rationalise nor minimise the implications of the complaints of Prime Minister Manning. Freedom of the media, and the wider and more fundamental freedom of expression, are not, and never were meant to be licence to abuse other people's rights.
It carries a social responsibility that no self-respecting professional journalist could expediently wink at and do his or her own thing.
What is puzzling is that Prime Minister Manning - with all the layers of media communication and information personnel at his disposal, not to mention his party's own resources and public relations "reach" into sections of the print and electronic media - should have waited until his PNM's 48th anniversary to catalogue the litany of errors and irresponsible reporting by the media that have so distraught him.
Did he, at any time, seek a correction to the falsehood reported about him by sections of the media?
If so, did the relevant media house fail or refuse to appropriately correct or apologise for the errors. For instance, in relation to his alleged reference to "bogus" kidnappings; or that he was requesting the government to pay his outstanding TT$1.1 million debt, as awarded against him by the court while he was Opposition Leader?
Further, did Mr. Manning and his communications and information advisers consider referring some, if not all, of the false, irresponsible and injurious reporting to the local Media Complaints Committee? Or is that he prefers legal action?
Abuse by calypsonian
Prime Minister Manning missed the opportunity last Saturday to be even-handed by not condemning also the irresponsibility, sheer arrogance and recklessness of Cro Cro's 'Face Reality'.
It is a song being used by the calypsonian for his personal gain - and not only at the expense of political elements, business people and others in the society, to whom he is evidently opposed, but the nation as a whole seeking to cope with a horrific criminal phenomenon in its social history.
Mr. Manning is clearly disturbed about the implications of the cited media misrepresentation of him in casually dismissing as "bogus" the kidnapping rampage that has so deeply wounded the country and tarnished its image, regionally and internationally.
I can empathise with him, for no head of government should be associated with such an irresponsible utterance.
For this and related substantial reasons - such as the pain and grief of families of tortured and murdered kidnapped victims, or those forced to pay millions to the armed criminals, the Prime Minister would have done himself and his government much credit by taking a stand against a calypso that so crudely sanctions kidnapping for ransom.
Let there be no self-serving, opportunistic rationalising, no intellectual dishonesty to excuse - in the name of social commentary, freedom of the performing artists, or freedom of expression - this blatantly divisive and dangerous song.
I still feel there is time in this Carnival season for him to speak with clarity and conviction on why a calypsonian, like a journalist, has no right to use freedom of expression as a licence to misreport, misrepresent and so callously abuse the rights of others. And I think we will hear from the Prime Minister before long.
If we are all to demonstrate our social responsibility in communicating with the public, there cannot, and must not, be double standards that overlook the wrongs of callous calypsonians but chastise irresponsible journalists.
*(Reprinted courtesy of Trinidad Express)