Dear Editor,
Could it be that there has been too much mention of names like Ronald Waddell in your newspaper for the government likes? It was with great disbelief that I read what a mean and nasty thing the government has done to Stabroek News by withholding its ads from the newspaper. About the most that SN can do now is continue to speak truth to power. In the spirit of the recently remembered (for his birthday), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who in one of his speeches invoked the words from the old Negro spiritual hymn thus “ain’t gonna let nobody turn me round” the SN must keep its truth marching on.
The beauty about truth is that it stands on its own and needs no formulation. It is out there as naked as ever. You don’t have to dress it up like you do a lie. The naked facts of the issue at hand here are the president of Guyana rants and raves against SN just prior to the general elections.
This is a “thing-in-itself” that has happened. SN did not even have to print it to make it true. It stands by itself. On the other hand, a lie needs thinkers and formulators, such as the kinds employed in many government offices. Formulation of a lie takes time, thus the long delay in communicating it to the SN representative in response to her first inquiry about the stopping of the ads. Obviously within that time was crafted the specious argument that Guyana’s other two newspapers enjoy a larger circulation than SN therefore that is the reason for GINA’s inauspicious action. That they cannot seem to produce evidence of this “superior” circulation by these other publications is evidence that such evidence does not exist. As the saying goes, there is no there, there. The emperor has no clothes.
The order by the permanent secretary of the Office of the President to GINA to pull its ads from SN more than likely did occur as the editor of SN asserts and thus remains true regardless of who acknowledges it. A perfect example that a lie needs thinkers and formulators is the US government coming up with the lie about WMDs in Iraq and Saddam Hussein’s connection to al Qaeda as a pretext for invading that country. The truth still stands that there are no WMDs there and there was never any connection between the late Iraqi leader and Bin Laden. However, as often will happen with lies, the US government is paying dearly for that one.
It is not unusual that newspapers tend to develop a certain slant in their political views, but ultimately they are responsible to the public and are expected to present the news accurately and fairly. If SN exhibits any slant it is hardly discernible to me while the other newspapers always seem to be more of an arm of government. It is a true saying that no one knows what lurks within the hearts of men. It could well be that the government has perceived its recent win as a mandate to move towards authoritarianism as long as it only affects a particular segment of the population. It could be that it perceives rightly or wrongly that SN’s readership consists mostly of those who didn’t vote for them and now wants to retaliate against this segment of the market by withdrawing opportunities for them to receive any benefits of government contracts. But if this is true even that tactic could backfire. SN’s circulation could experience such a surge because of this action that the government would be banging on SN’s door trying to get it to accept it ads.
To be sure, a government is not purely a private corporation whose sole raison d’etre is financial and economic gains. A government is also responsible for encouraging private enterprise as well as for fostering, promoting and encouraging free speech and this could only be embodied in a free media of which the press is a part.
The government of a country should not be run by small minded, pusillanimous, vindictive partisans but statesmen capable of transcending personal motives for revenge and upholding all citizens rights to criticize government actions and debate critical issues objectively. Many people who watch American TV must surely have seen instances where high officials of the US government are in the middle of addressing an audience and persons with opposing views somehow manage to get into the room and disrupt the speech by heckling the official, (who may even be a president or vice president) only to see that official calmly with grace and pride praise the democratic system that would allow even those persons to be heard.
It is always possible of course that the Guyana president himself may not have directly ordered ads pulled from SN. But instead it may have been the “what did the boss mean by that?” syndrome at work. This is the phenomenon where an employee upon hearing the boss criticize someone or something, guesses that the boss wants to punish that person or thing and wanting to seem as a trusted protector of the boss’s interests guesses that he wants him to fix the problem, and in the case of SN the way he knows to do it is to order GINA to stop placing ads there. Of course this sort of thing happens all the time but a famous incident of it was years ago in America when well-known businessman Jack Welch talked 3in an interview about “problems” with the defence industry being a strategic challenge because there were fewer contracts and Jack’s corporation needed to be the lowest-cost player. As a result the people who were in the room during the interview left the room saying “Jack Welch hates the defence business” or “he’s given up on defence as a place for us to be” It is called guess-work. You don’t want to approach the boss and ask for clarification, instead you want to be seen more as a trusted protector of his interests and a fixer of his problems, and so you guess. And these guesses are based on what you would want if you were in the boss’s place.
Art Klein, in his book Who really matters devotes an entire chapter to guess work. He even relates the story of Henry II the twelfth century ruler of England who in an effort to control the church had his bosom friend the archdeacon Thomas a Becket appointed as Archbishop of Canterbury.
However, Becket shifted allegiance and broke off from the king even excommunicating some bishops loyal to the king. When four of the king’s knights overheard the king grumbling about Becket and complaining that not one of his “lazy servants” would even help him fix this problem, they took Henry’s remarks as a command and slipped out, rode to Canterbury and killed the Archbishop. Of course the king never really intended this murder and it eventually cost him dearly including losing his best friend whom he missed and had hoped to reconcile with and also losing his high political standing and respect among and of the people. These are the kinds of backlashes that leaders could very well suffer when their employees guess at their meaning and carry out what they perceive as a veiled order to harm another.
The Stabroek News must push to increase its readership at home and on the Internet regardless of this inauspicious government action and its current readers must encourage their friends and relatives everywhere to read the papers and to support it in its endeavour to provide unbiased and complete coverage of the news. This way, the even greater circulation that would be realized will indeed render arguments against advertising in SN null, void and counter-productive to any enterprise, government or otherwise, wishing to publicize its services or needs.
Yours faithfully,
Stafford Wills
