Minding my business, media credibility, rigged elections, accountability and story telling in Guyana 2023

Media Credibility

A media worker told me one time that the media sets the agenda. She was always pushed me to be careful. To be careful not only about when the issues I was concerned about did not get into the media, but to be careful too when people might seem to 'support' the things I support.

I am a citizen who checks headlines and reads some stories daily, and shares some stories. I do not bother with some news outlets which might have nice stories from time to time , but who tell stories in ways which I do not agree with.

I use the print media mostly to share opinions. 

I actively engaged the media between 1997 and 2016 or so to support the advocacy work of organisations and groups with which I was involved.

One journalist and I had personal problems and he told me he would not report any story in which I was involved. I would like to think he wanted to avoid unconscious bias, rather than a way to silence me. I ensured that I stayed away to avoid any lack of reporting.

Another media worker/owner called me one night to cuss me up (using all the language).  I wrote a letter to question their reporting of sexual abuse. The man cussed me because I was not vigilant about other issues and only about gender-based violence. The letter was published. I have not written any others since to that media house though my name might have appeared as signatory on others.

I taught from 2009 to 2019 the practical components of  the course at the University of Guyana called 'Online multimedia journalism'. 

I realised early enough that the course was not so much a practical IT course as a journalism course and that I had to stray into the waters of assessing not only IT skills, but also journalism skills and practice.  

I learned about journalism after reading what journalists like Gaiutra Bahadur and others were writing (not in Guyana) were writing about journalism. And what other engaged citizens around the world were writing about the media, and especially during the Donald Trump years in the USA.

I stopped teaching the course when I realised the course had to be upgraded to skills and technologies which I did not use. 

And I knew I was being unfair to the students, as I had never practised journalism or had gone through journalism training and was demanding things of them which no one had demanded of me.

In 2015, the Guyana Cultural Association of New York gave me the Godfrey Chin Prize for Heritage Journalism. For a short time, the United States embassy included me on their media list. It seems that the US Embassy media team considered blogs as part of the media landscape at the time. Until they no longer did.

Media credibility

I used Chimanada Ngozi Adichie's talk 'Danger of a single story' when teaching the journalism course. 

I understand the dangers of a single story, have read multiple versions of the same story and lamented how some stories are told. 

In May 2022,   eight-year-old Timothy Kippins, six-year-old Triston Kippins and one-year-old Zhalia Fluein died in a fire in Barnwell, East Bank Demerara. 

Kojo McPherson wrote on Facebook..about the reporting by two media entities. He wrote about how one media entity said that 'the mother was not at home' while the other media entity reported that 'the mother was at work'.

 Kojo said.. both are factually true, and pointed out though, what impressions are left in the minds of consumers as to why the mother was not at home.

So yep.. many truths, many contexts. For me now, credibility is not so much the reporting of truth, but rather the reporting of the hundreds and thousands of truths which exist, some of which violently contradict each other.

Rigged elections

In July 2019, I participated accidentally in a workshop hosted by the Guyana Press Association around suicide prevention reporting. Guyana was making a lot of stories as suicide capital of the world.  I had clumsily tried to assist the GPA in improving the reporting. Dr Paloma Mohammed is always in my head when making decisions on whether to call out, or to call in and try to help to fix things.

I also reached out to Nazima Raghubir when I was concerned about reporting on gender-based violence and wondered if I had read their guidelines wrong. She was always responsive, though powerless as the reporting guidelines are just well, voluntary reporting guidelines and it is up to the consumers of media to decide how to deal with the media houses. 

Nazima Raghubir has also been involved in reporting on many of the issues I wanted to advocate.

Neil Marks has written his truth about the 2023 GPA elections. He asserts that the elections were rigged. .(Svetlana Marshall-Abrams has responded) He also believes that citizens would now question the credibility of the Guyana Press Association executive  as custodians of "decency, transparency, accountability, and fairness " 

I have shared, praised and referenced Neil Marks' work as good practice in my own work. I have also disagreed with many things he has produced and edited. As I have with other media houses and journalists in Guyana. 

Accountability

The GPA elections were the recent circus and I got engaged because I am not planting garden or doing anything else productive. Many citizens who are consumed in the Guyana's PNC/PPP politics were, some of the violently, in favour of one or the other candidate.  The GPA elections were about PNC and PPP in this miserable place. I was also puzzled.

Who were these other people who were disenfranchised? Not allowed to vote, long time members? Were the people who are not media workers voting still? Why aren't there pickets, long petitions by people known in the media? As with so many other political parties and organisations in Guyana's history, why not just form your own organisation and put in place all the things which are not meeting your needs?  And why does it really matter to me what any group of people do in their own sphere of organising?

Sometimes journalists are good at telling their own stories - and to use journalism principles to tell their truths.

I have had a problem with the media in Guyana, in that while the journalists demand accountability from others , they are not always accountable to the public.

I have called in and called out media houses and journalists on stories which I found badly reported, or told in ways if truthfully, told in ways which were incomplete so truth , while 'untruths'  of omission.

And the landscape changes and there have been problems when some things which were only true in the minds of the producer generated other violent truths.  

I realised that while we all are custodians of decency, transparency, accountability, and fairness. that these values are subjective depending on whether we are PPP or PNC or neither. GPA then, is not the custodian at all, nor is any journalist who is either PPP or PNC, or neither.

Storytelling

"Come on Vidya.. you must have some successes, some positive stories to tell" the woman and man interviewing me about the work for gender equality told me. 

I do not believe there is any success really as men younger than me continue to kill and maim and abuse women, that people beat children and that violent and abusive men and women are praised for their contributions to national life while they are not held accountable for their abuse of others. 

No success really as men and women who I thought were against child abuse and gender-based violence stand by their political leaders and friends who have allegations of child abuse and gender-based violence against them. 

What positive story is there to tell? 

And young Kapohn on Facebook laments for a Positive Guyana news page and the cynics point him in the direction of the DPI and other places which show Positive Guyana. And there are many who show versions of Guyana, which I do not recognise.

But in this weirdness of Guyana, we recognise that the media setting the agenda can decide how to highlight the positive and silence the negative. But at the same time, there is this other weirdness of who decides what is positive and what is negative?

The GPA elections seen as a triumph for many who feel that the PPP want to control the press, and a negative for those who think the elections are rigged. 

The 2020 General elections are seen as a triumph for those who wanted free and fair elections and a return of the PPP, and a failure for those who thought the PNC had changed ; and a failure for those who see the PPP resuming their activities with a vengeance which had lost them the elections in 2015.

Who decides what is decent, what fairness looks like, what is transparent and what isn't? What happens when those thoughts conflict and cannot be reconciled?

A positive story I could tell was that I learned to be accountable to people , and that I have lost nothing in being accountable to 'friends' and 'enemies'.  

That I am selectively transparent depending on who is asking, and that some think I am decent and some think I am not decent.

And that positive stories these days for me are that the yard did not flood after rain, that lights and water are staying on, that I walk on the road without getting robbed or knocked down, that I did not have to holler at a minibus driver to turn down the music, that my blood pressure did not rise when reading the news. Or that I was able to access quality health care at the Health Centre while other times I have had to go 'private'.

But I not sure if that is positive for others.

There are positive stories too that I wish I could read about, or write myself or co-write. 

Like stories about how do we in this place with multiple truths, manage to move beyond violence and to  reconcile those truths and create new truths which are nurturing for all of us. 

(Updated on 17 May, 2023 to link response from Svetlana Marshall-Abrams)