Fear, power, and an exposed press

Last Saturday’s dramatic turn of events at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, DC, generated enough emotion to dominate my thoughts ever since - other massively significant issues notwithstanding.

Yes, I had considered elaborating on last week’s missive regarding deep, pervasive national fear and a patent inability to address its causes and effects: the disconnect between political messaging and reality, and the largely silent rejection - even among the faithful - of empty reassurance.

There has also been accumulating evidence to challenge the deterrent effects of more punitive fines and expanded traffic laws in the absence of meaningful enforcement. And, even so, to redirect behaviours to minimise risk. I promise to return to these sometime in the future.

But today, what is presumed to have been an attempted violent attack on the President of the USA, Donald Trump, has been dissected in numerous ways, the very least being its impact on and meaning for the numerous journalists in and out of that dinner hall.

In videos of the incident (few re-broadcast the opening moments), I kept my eyes on the woman in white who had been seated at the head table and was later seen crawling on her hands and knees as the President was hustled off by what seemed to be a dozen security personnel.

She turned out to be Weijia Jiang, CBS News correspondent and president of the White House Correspondents' Association. Crawling alone and seemingly not a concern of anyone else.

This episode forced me to recall that following the violence of July 27, 1990 in T&T, among the numerous emergent issues associated with the attempted coup d’etat, was the manner in which the role and interests of journalists and media were diminished or largely ignored.

Port of Spain, Trinidad under siege July,1990

For what it’s worth, I remember my own scramble to safety – on hands and knees like the lady in white – across the parliament floor as the shooting and shouting and screaming continued. I tell you, at that point, your instincts as a journalist play second fiddle to a will to survive.

Late journalist and former TTT hostage, Raoul Pantin, went to his grave a perpetual advocate for some form of redress not only for himself but for all journalists who were caught up in the deadly attacks almost 36 years ago. During the ensuing Commission of Enquiry between 2011 and 2013 there had been largely ignored mention.

Then came Saturday and attacker Cole Tomas Allen’s insanity. News reached us in Marseille, France where the Council of IFEX – the global network of free expression organisations – was meeting in the absence of Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Jodie Ginsberg.

Where, then, was Jodie? The following morning, she explained there had been “the disorientation of being pulled to the ground by a man sitting next to me and told to get under the table as Secret Service flooded into the room …”

She told of being hustled out of the building and into a side street “with no instructions of where to go or how to get back into the Hilton (where I was staying).”

“The part of my brain that deals daily with attacks on journalists can’t help but wonder … what if they (Trump and his senior colleagues) weren’t the target? What if journalists were the target?”

Then she reminded us that in that room there had been journalists “who have been kidnapped, wrongfully detained, and shot at. Journalists who have been violently arrested. Journalists who cover politics here in the United States who - along with their families - are subjected to daily death threats. Journalists who have been assaulted at protests and political rallies.”

This not only made me think about the journalists in other parts of the world where they are frequently targeted, killed, and maimed, but also of our own media professionals who confront different kinds of serious assaults and remain unacknowledged and generally defenceless. Cannon fodder at the mercy of propagandists, sycophants, and hostile politicians.

It is true that few things attract such a scenario more than poor quality reporting, but it is also a fact that the importance of favourable political imaging tends to outweigh the value of professional journalism.

And when this happens - like Jiang and her colleagues, like Raoul Pantin, Dominic Kalipersad, and others - journalists often find themselves exposed and alone. On hands and knees. At precisely the moments when their role matters most, there is too often no protection, no support, and no one truly there.