Can I have any sympathy for the Stabroek News in the sweltering controversy that it is currently embroiled in with the Government of Guyana? The answer is yes. One cannot personalize issues where principles are involved. I cannot accept that the Stabroek News has a circulation that is lower than the Chronicle.
If this is not the case then how can the Chronicle get more state patronage than SN? To my mind the curtailment of state advertisements and the Stabroek News's cries that it is being targeted by a government that doesn't like it, brings into focus, the need for a discussion on freedom of the press.
More times than I can count, I have advocated a Press Complaint Commission in Guyana. If we had one, the exalted pedestal that SN puts itself on would have been brought down to the ground in a sudden collapse. In all the exchanges that are going on, the Stabroek News sympathisers need to learn a little bit more of the nature of SN. This paper literally hounded me down in this country. I survived because the paper couldn't find any dent in my integrity.
Before we break the hearts of those that think that SN is the great journal on which stands the sacred principles of a free press some revelations about the mistreatment of the Kaieteur News are in order. Let us see if those that have rushed to the defence of SN will do the same.
I am not going to discuss the era when KN never got state placements. That is a well-established fact. Do you know that the Ministry of Education subscribes to SN and not KN? That was told to me in 2005. The Jesuit presbytery does not subscribe to KN, only to SN. Father Harold Wong told me this last year.
Pegasus, as a matter of policy, does not offer KN to its guests. I wrote about that in one of my columns and complained to Pegasus management about that omission. Tim Neale, who came here to monitor the press during the August general elections (2006), lamented this attitude of the Pegasus in his official report.
For some esoteric reason, Eusi Kwayana refuses to send a mail for publication to KN. Kwayana even responds to issues arising out of KN's letter pages but he sends his responses to SN. My point is that when KN is at a disadvantage, you don't hear the voices of indignation.
Suddenly, SN is feeling victimized, and the comments are pouring in. I repeat, I believe Stabroek News should be the recipient of State advertisements but the Guyanese people need to know that SN is not a willing practitioner of press freedom. After the publication of this article, I hope I receive the long-awaited apology from SN's editor-in-chief, David De Caires.
An analysis of the Stabroek News must be contextualized within an understanding of class and colour in Guyana. I came to understand the age of the domination of the light-complexioned class in Guyana in the forties, fifties and sixties when I became a columnist for SN in the late eighties.
I didn't live in those periods but I understood the sociological nuances of these eras after seeing that culture for myself at the Stabroek News long after the epoch of the hegemony of that culture had died in Guyana.
Stabroek News is an atavistic reversion to the zeitgeist of the pre-Independence age where colour, class and status found expression in the Portuguese mercantile society.
At Stabroek News, all dark-skinned people had to know their place. Any attempt to emulate Lutheran defiance invoked the wrath of the SN elite. Miles Fitzpatrick, co-founder of SN, is one of the most intolerant, arrogant and chauvinistic custodians of elite culture I have ever met in the Caribbean.
I once asked Ras Michael his opinion of Fitzpatrick when Fitzpatrick had to interview him for his application to become a columnist. Ras Michael told me what I had already known - you had to offer respect to Fitzpatrick as the most learned brain Guyana produced. Don't ever talk back to him. You will lose your position at the paper.
One Easter holiday, David De Caires was on vacation and Fitzpatrick held the fort as editor. I disagreed on his interpretation of one of my columns and Mr. Fitzpatrick was livid that I could have talked back to him. That was the end of me at Stabroek News. When De Caires came back, I continued to write but Fitzpatrick could not believe that an unknown, little dark-skinned guy could defy him.
Fitzpatrick resented even the calling of my name. In the midst of Fitzpatrick's witch-hunt of me, I became unlucky and got sued by Dr. Hughley Hanoman. David De Caires summoned me and told me that Fitzpatrick will only appear for the paper and will not defend me. It was Khemraj Ramjattan who came to my rescue and there began the beginning of a fraternal bond.
When that matter is heard, I hope Mr. Fitzpatrick appears in court and not transfer the case to another lawyer just so he would avoid seeing my face in court. This same Fitzpatrick that refused to be my attorney is representing Hamilton Green in his lawsuit against the PNC for wrongful expulsion.
What could I have done to Mr. Fitzpatrick to cause him to resent me?
In 1995, SN published an editorial note in which Mr. Fitzpatrick urged the paper to have me arrested for abusing its senior reporter, Gitanjali Singh. I once wrote and I am writing it again that if ever Mr. Fitzpatrick should achieve power in Guyana, I will never stay in this country. I will leave immediately. I don't think anyone in life so disapproves of me as Miles Fitzpatrick
The passion against me by Stabroek News was unbelievable. When a group of senior PNC lecturers in 1995 at UG refused to renew my contract without recourse to industrial and legal rules, the Council at the UG declined to endorse that illegal decision and I was given a contract renewal.
The first person to question why the Council re-appointed me was David De Caires, who vented his anger against me in an editorial note. I will never forgive David De Caires for this because at that time my daughter was just five years old and I was facing the bread line.
I see De Caires jogging in the National Park and when our paths cross I put down my head because I just don't want to look at him.
This is the paper that people in this country believe practises honest and professional journalism. Would anyone who supports the Stabroek News in its fight with the government like to comment on how I was treated?
Of course, the hypocrites knew that SN had witch-hunted me but democracy and freedom mean different things to different people. I admit if I was President of Guyana, I would not have given them a cent of advertisement after what they did to me. But then again, I will never be president.