Time for Regional Media to Up Our Game!

CARIBBEAN coverage of the controversy between Guyana and Venezuela again underlines the need for urgent and effective steps to again organize regional journalism and communications training workshops to help regional reporters, journalists and opinion writers to always better understand regional issues so as to better cover them always.

Back in the last quarter of the last century, the Caribbean Association of Media Workers (CAMWORK) and its national affiliates like the then Saint Lucia Media Workers Association (SLMWA), with regional and international assistance, organized annual training workshops along regional and international themes.

Those efforts were very successful, to the extent that the SLMWA’s annual training courses through a Communication Arts Program (CAP), with entirely local ‘elder’ tutors from within the local media, evolved in such a way that the Caribbean Institute for Media and Communications (CARIMAC) of the University of the West Indies (The UWI) adopted it.

As a result, successful participants thereby earned the first year of a two-year course that saw Saint Lucia post a record as the nation with the largest number of CARIMAC students for as long as it existed.

Unfortunately, the SLMWA is no longer and training is still treated by media owners more as an expense than an investment, with ‘reporters’ and ‘announcers’ virtually walking off the streets into learning-on-the-job media work that reflects on screen, on air and in print.

Fast-forward to almost the end of the first quarter of the 21st Century and entry of journalism into the virtual world, which has made reporters today (not all, but too many) lazier in terms of going after a story, relying on cell phones and computers, internet and other forms of Information Technology (IT) more than using their brains and initiatives to pursue and create new stories and features that didn’t originate online.

Over the past 30 years (or more), the effect of IT on media work has been both positive and negative, making a world of information available at our fingertips, but also making too many of us become (voluntarily) entirely dependent on the internet for everything we want to write about.

Of course, the internet is a wonderful research tool, but there’s also the problem of most reporters being unwilling to thoroughly research the background of any issue they wish to, simple because of “too much reading…”

The almost 125-year-old Guyana-Venezuela border conflict is one such case where, since the latest flare-up from Venezuela’s latest claim to two-thirds or five-eighths of Guyana (depending on who’s measuring), the press (generally) has been more interested in highlighting the prospects of war than peace.

As a result, most have stressed on reporting the trading of words of war, possible attacks and defense and comparing the combat-readiness of the two nations’ defense and armed forces, obviously more interested in fanning the flames of war because fighting makes more headlines than talking and therefore brings more viewers, listeners and readers – called ‘ratings’ today – and more earnings for the media house.

I spoke to many colleagues at the Argyle Conference Center on Thursday who were annoyed the meeting continued “so long” (for ten hours) – and worse, were disappointed that the final ‘Argyle Declaration’ didn’t contain they type of ‘Breaking News’ they were hoping to file.

Some actually felt that the meeting was “a waste of our time”, just because they didn’t get a chance to quiz or grill or even gruel the two Presidents; others were simply “not interested in the long history” that dates back to 1899 and includes important intervals in  1962, 1966 and 1972 before now, including a historic visit to Guyana by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for a summit with then President Bharrat Jagdeo (now Vice President) in which the exchange was about ensuring that colonial history did not consume the neighboring republics, but that they instead cooperated as neighbors to build better futures in peace.

Following the meeting, a colleague posted a post in a regional online medium that poured cold water on the St. Vincent summit, arguing the leaders ended with “nice words”, “photo ops”, but “no substantial talks” and other such cold-water phrases.

I respect all colleagues’ views, but also (not often) respond to those I find unfair or unreasonable.

In this case, I posted the following:

“It takes words to bring both war and peace and first talks about border disputes never bring an end solution.

“The two Presidents shook hands for the first time and the two sides agreed to continue to disagree, but to continue talking.

“They have actually set a timetable for the next 3 months, and agreed to preserve peace, stop talking war and act without hostility.

“To always want more is a natural human expectation, but like I said here yesterday, we in the press should not want to rush a story’s development just to make ‘Breaking News’ headlines.

“Our role is to follow and report honestly and not to shape the stories we cover. Most of the press in SVG yesterday was annoyed the meeting went into the night because they had flights catch, but that’s nobody’s fault.

“Think of talks over Cyprus, Catalonia or Nagorno Karabachk… Look at the 70-year-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict –  and then, just consider the Gy-Vz issue is approaching 125 years (a century and a quarter).

“In that sense, it was no less than a big triumph for Caribbean and Latin American diplomacy and keeping the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.”

I will not go into his reply to my reply, except to say that I was satisfied with it.

But I will say that after 47 years in the business of writing and covering important regional and international events, what I saw in Saint Vincent was the regional and international press having deplaned in the morning with the hope of leaving by afternoon, to catch connecting flights booked without considering the fact that a 124-years-old border conflict cannot be solved in one brief meeting by leaders rushing to come to quick conclusions because the press is waiting impatiently.

However, (and thankfully), it just doesn’t work that way – yesterday or today – and as the First Quarter of the Second Millennium comes nearer to its end, the Caribbean media definitely needs to up our game.