Governments, tourist boards, and the travel industry spend millions of dollars each year to create a positive picture of the Caribbean and the visitor experience; a sense that all is well in a country and that a destination and a vacation will provide a happy and memorable time. They also have a network of information services providing news and information locally and internationally.
However, recent damaging coverage about deaths and violent criminal acts against visitors in a number of Caribbean nations has not only caused the media in key tourism feeder markets to question the safety of visitors, but is now resulting in interested parties, from lawyers to victims, disseminating negative messages on social media in ways that cannot be controlled and, if inaccurate, are hard to refute.
For example, in the Bahamas over the last year there has been a wave of serious crime against visitors and residents alike. It has become a national issue that is leading both the Bahamas government and the main opposition party to consider the reintroduction of capital punishment as a deterrent, and more generally much harsher sentencing of
