Dear Editor,
As we approach World Press Freedom Day 2026, events on the ground domestically and in the world at large are moving so quickly that it is hard to keep up.
Correspondingly, rapid and significant changes in local print and on social media platforms are not just occurring in Guyana, similar developments across the world show that both podcasters and social media upstarts claim that they have emerged because they want to free themselves from dependence on mainstream media and away from government reach and established social conventions.
The general belief is that people want to read shorter, biased, and sometimes ‘more juicy’ articles, letters or posts that tickle their imagination or to ‘set tongues wagging’.
In earnest to satisfy the gullible, the digital upstarts fail to take into account that events on the ground and around the world have become more complex, fast moving and at times, so deceptive that it’s hard to establish the facts.
Because of the digital revolution, we are more likely to spend more time with screens than with newspapers, and online news outlets, our preference is to focus on morals rather than difficult truths. The result is an ever-decreasing level of literacy.
Here in Guyana, many social media upstarts have sprung up within recent times; Action News Guyana, The Hub, Westside Daily News, Guyana Breaking Updates, Headlines 360, Credible Sources, Guyana Daily Update, GT 59 FM Radio to mention a few, now proliferate. Their role and place are characterised by certain common objectives; to repeat and to appear to be more authentic about stories that have already been published by mainstream media; to cast the PPP/C in a bad light and by unreasonably questioning and negativizing any and every government policy initiative.
There are people who read, watch, and absorb content without actively creating or engaging with it, nevertheless, while welcoming the new digital upstarts, they appear totally oblivious, unconcerned or even unaware of the false and misleading narratives fed to them. Eventually, they become addicted; consequently, they end up being victims of depression and hopelessness.
Try as hard as they can, no digital upstart can be truly faithful to an entire nation. There are times when they try to please a restricted readership circle who claim to represent the nation as a whole, and that can be problematic.
False, ‘old hat’ and repetitive narratives may trigger ‘readership fatigue’ with readers blanking content of a useless and depressing nature posted by some social media upstarts who, in the scramble for space on already crowded platforms just post anything. By publishing repetitive and depressing stories, more subtractions than additions by subscribers becomes the end result.
And while the following may appear overly basic, the point is that when readers break with faith in reputable and reliable media sources who, in their view, can no longer be relied upon to publish letters of interest or to carry topical human-interest stories, people end up depending increasingly on rumours, hearsay and gossip resulting in a low level of appreciation of political, social and economic occurrences in Guyana.
The entry of digital upstarts into the social media market is a manifestation of the fulfillment of their aspiration to achieve intellectual critique of national and international events. However, many eventually end up sitting comfortably with Guyanese non-traditional values and counterculture.
The picture of present-day Guyana portrayed by some digital upstarts is unsurprisingly flat – a symptom of depthlessness and an obsession with surfaces – spectacles, speculation, sensation and mirrors; in effect, a virtual expression of Guyana’s reality.
The denial by some digital ‘hot shots’ of basic foundational truths has resulted in their rejection of facts, replacing objective reality with a lack of journalistic profundity. And, just as the distinction between surface and depth is so glaring in their posts, so too is their weakness in class differentiation. Those who find the time to peruse such posts would easily recognise the nihilistic approach in their stories posted as well as frequent ad hominem attacks on public figures.
As the upstarts seek space in an already narrow domestic political environment, it has become unavoidable for them to reflect both neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideological and political views in their posts ignoring completely historical and contemporary East Asian or West Asian reliable sources of information.,
Claiming their ‘emancipatory’ upstartish journalism is a vehicle used to ‘protect and shelter people with no voice’, the ghost writers for the digital upstarts conceal their identities as they try to open backdoors to happenings in the corridors of power with the hope of gathering scoops to strip established media houses of their dominance.
As we observe World Press Freedom Day 2026, we should be on guard against the ‘champions of transparency’ promoted by today’s ‘digital evangelists’ and ‘social media entrepreneurs’ whose posts, on close examination, represent opacity, evasion and assaults from the shadows.
We should also recognise that hope for a bright and prosperous Guyana is not to be found in posts by shadowy digital upstarts, many of whom have an axe to grind with either the establishment or government.
While we must support a free press, we must guard against the proliferation of any and every social media upstart who thrive on fake news, ethic divisiveness, repetition and fear-mongering aimed at creating doubts about the prospects for prosperity and improvement in the lives of all Guyanese.