Dear Editor,
In 1990, then editor of Stabroek News (SN), a good friend, Sharief Khan told me that David de Caires wanted to see me. So in I went with Sharief to be greeted with a pleasantly surprising offer to become the sports editor of Stabroek News. God how I wished I could have taken that offer, but I had to decline because I was months away from migrating and it would have been unfair to take that position only for a few months. That de Caires made that offer to me, knowing that I was a PPP activist (then part of the national executive of the PYO as well) spoke significantly of the manner of man he was, possibly having seen something in me that I did not recognise. I had been writing letters to the editors of various newspapers in Guyana for a few years when the offer was made. At the time of the offer, current and now last editor, Anand Persaud was a cub reporter whom I had gotten to know.
After I migrated, de Caires accepted my request to be a roving Diaspora correspondent and for years I had a regular column sharing the experiences and achievements of various Guyanese Americans as well as another column on news briefs from the Guyanese Diaspora.[1] I reminisce on these as I, like teeming others in and out of Guyana, share our sadness at the news of the closure of SN. A vacuum will be created on the media landscape in Guyana that can never be filled, given the current direction and realities of that landscape globally, and we, news hounds and others who keep abreast of local developments will be poorer.
It is moot to reflect on the trajectory of Stabroek News over the last two decades or so and the fact that closure would have been a function of government actions as much as anything else. I recall that in 2007, former Guyanese President and People’s Progressive Party (PPP) stalwart, Janet Jagan called for the Bharrat Jagdeo-led PPP/C government to reverse its decision to stop giving state advertisements to SN, to which Jagdeo publicly insulted that person without whose support he would never have been president of Guyana. This withdrawal of government advertising for a significant period along with government debt to SN would surely have affected the paper’s bottom line. The refusal of a radio licence also would have similarly impacted.
As well, while many gave SN kudos for its independent journalism, there is no doubt that it went overboard in its targeting of the government ditching journalistic balance and triangulation, two of the basic tenets of journalism and this tainted its independence. Context was often either missing or distorted and questionable reportage was stoutly defended rather than acknowledged with a view to making any necessary corrections. There was also quite a bit of advocacy reflected in what were supposed to be news articles and often times the right to respond was not provided to selected individuals and entities.
However, at the end of the day SN served a function, and its absence will negatively impact the media landscape in Guyana, especially with a preponderance of government media outlets, vapid anti-government outlets and journalist wanna-bees who don’t know the first thing about journalism, often times revelling in conspiracy theories, manufactured ‘news’ and baptising of baseless opinions as ‘facts’.
As SN departs, one would hope that its employees would be able to access employment and/or whatever they seek to ensure they can continue to meet the needs of themselves and families.