Sufficient to disclaim a once prominent charge (even from within) of a “single-story” agenda, our media have recently offered up a menu so diverse that observers with a genuine interest in exploring the more prominent highlights, now too often consider themselves hapless practitioners of negligent omission.
Latterly, the media industry itself –
whatever the preoccupation with eluding our own front pages – has occupied the maze
of confusions. The subject of survival did not have to reside in the column of
sudden development, having long been the focus of critical, methodical scrutiny
both from within and without.
For example, the largely ignored 2016 Caribbean
media viability report of the Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC) on
Jamaican media, provided substantial guidance on most objective circumstances characteristic
of the T&T Newsday crash, even in the face of eminently dismissible
post-facto claims and assertions.
“What has happened to Newsday is not an
isolated anomaly but part of a wider pattern of vulnerability and,
increasingly, contraction,” the MIC (of which I am Vice President) said.
 |
| The last print copy of the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday |
These dispatches also serve as
counterpoints to the claim that media audiences are best served by naïve providers,
paid and unpaid propagandists, and zealots who do not consider themselves bound
by professional journalistic imperatives including (weighted) “balance” and pursuit
of the truth.
Meanwhile, and not unrelatedly, we have an
ongoing discourse on geopolitical realities that has been implanted through dangerously
intimate engagement. Subject as it is to partisan fervour, there is certain to
be confusion and discord, instead of reasoned debate and the pursuit of consensus.
“Sovereignty” is meanwhile selectively
determined as factor and non-factor depending on the time of day or day of the
week. So too, whom to love and whom to despise. Who is friend and who is foe.
It all seems to depend on fickle political preference.
Then, right there on this endless menu, is
the national economy. Through this you find rare consensus on untrammelled
descent. Even when not so defined, witness the desperate ad hoc fervour to
address a dire strait. Punishment and displacement defined as economic reward.
Borrow, tax, and rearrange. What, indeed, is the plan?
This sits alongside inelastic relations
between proclaimed lawlessness and authoritarian coercion, and a debasing of
judicious prerogative in favour of inflexible retribution. It’s easy to get
there once favourable crime statistics trump the pervasive presence of fear and
when violent revenge is preferred over justice.
Not to be outdone, along came Monday’s
Tobago House of Assembly elections – a cruel deadline prohibiting its upgrade to
the point of exclusivity in today’s offering.
It was difficult through three short days
there to suggest a forecast, save for the habitual durability of the status quo
in the absence of visible, frenetic activism.
It
would have been interesting to have explored the main factors behind the TPP’s
sweeping victory. But by now you would have already had your fill of it.
There
remain two promising things to add to today’s examination of the information
maze: proposed amendments to the Maternity Protection Act (let’s leave the
Retrenchment and Severance Benefits Act - RSBA - for now) and the conduct of
this year’s steelband competitions.
The
RSBA requires sole attention. I remember covering its early application in 1986
and the turbulent period in industrial relations history reminiscent, by some,
of the watershed era of the 1930s. More on that another time.
The
enlightened amendments to the MPA need further elaboration and analysis. The
suggested changes appear, prima facie, to be in accordance with modern thinking
on maternal and family rights – the latter concept fully resonant with a number
of conventions establishing “family life” as a bedrock of civilised existence. I
am hoping more specifics come to light as we proceed with this.
I
did mention two “promising things.” The other is, of course, the fact that
ongoing steelband competitions are reinforcing my view that pan is the single
greatest and best thing we do. There is nothing else that comes close.
For
the umpteenth time, it’s not just the music delivered. Here we have a model for
social organisation and an avenue for generation of economic value that is tragically
underestimated.
If
you doubt me, head over to any panyard near where you live or work. Don’t judge
only from the competitions – though Sunday’s Junior Panorama Finals should not
be missed. When you’ve done that, then talk. Meanwhile, we have a crowded maze
to negotiate.
