What's the Gleaner's agenda?
Published:Sunday | May 23, 2010 | 12:00 AM
The Editor, Sir:
I note with dismay the partisan antics of the Gleaner, and I have to wonder what is in it for you to forever paint the Government in a bad light through contributors, columnists and your own staff writers.
I have concluded that if someone were in a state of depression and needed a slight nudge to end it all (commit suicide), just read a Gleaner newspaper on any given day. Bad news makes the front page, while good news usually gets tucked away somewhere else where most readers don't go.
I give Professor Carolyn Cooper my 'full hundred' when she wrote in her column in the Sunday Gleaner dated May 9, " If the editors of the Gleaner really want to boost our morale in these dread times, they should consider another strategy: give us more good news, even if it's bad for business". If I could add, "bad news begets bad news".
criminal activities
Does the Gleaner realise that criminal activities, including killings, are rampant everywhere in the world, not just Jamaica? One Jamaican friend who lives in England, and who returns here at least once per year, told me that things were not so pretty in that country either. She said that every week in a certain area of the 'Great' Britain, blacks were killing each other, but it never got reported in the 'big' newspapers there. Do you wonder why? Maybe unlike the Gleaner, the media there did not want to highlight the bad in their country, which could have a negative effect on their tourism sector.
Where in the world do you see the leading newspaper of the land literally, every chance it gets, paint the Government of the day in such a bad light? Granted some of it is self-inflicted, but give me a break! Maybe it's true when that listener on the Mutty Perkins' talk show on Power 106 said "the Gleaner is in bed with the PNP".
Yes, the Government has placed its back against the wall, but do you realise that you and other media houses have probably won Chris-topher 'Dudus' Coke's case by giving him unnecessary attention? His lawyers will have a good defence, as attorney Bert Samuels insinuated by saying that the man would not get a fair trial because of all that has gone down. Mr Coke has been literally tried, convicted and sentenced by the media and the People's National Party before being arrested.
How come no one was calling for the Government to resign when MPs excused themselves from Parliament to go to a known 'don's' funeral?
The good news is that (yes, there is good news) the country has passed its first IMF test with flying colours, despite the mess we are in. The media can support the Government and the country by placing more emphasis on ways to improve the economy, by highlighting the positives, not necessarily downplaying the negatives, but just striking a balance.
I am, etc.,
JAUMAELYNNE JOHNSON