During the turbulent sixties, the PPP often accused the private media and in particular the Chronicle of inflammatory reporting intended to provoke strife and mayhem. An objective analysis would bear out some of the PPP’s concerns about the reportage and this has been deeply embedded in its version of the history of that period. In later years the Chronicle became state-owned and when it entered office in 1992, the PPP/C was unwilling to countenance privatisation of the state media on the grounds that the party had been targeted ruthlessly by the private media in the period leading up to the disturbances of 1964 and felt that it was important for the government to retain control over the state-owned newspaper and radio. There was a view in sections of civil society that given its concerns about the private media during the 60s, the PPP/C should retain the state media prior to a considered assessment of its future. It hasn’t relinquished control.
It is all the more disconcerting therefore that in recent years, the PPP/C government has mercilessly commandeered the newspaper to campaign for it. This has extended to placing of particularly divisive editorials which appear intended to stir up racial, political and other cleavages in the interest of the electoral fortunes of ruling party. In this charged electoral season, the Chronicle has continued the placement of inflammatory content in its columns undoubtedly under the draconian control of the government.
In its first report on the coverage of the general elections, for the month of March, the Media Monitoring Unit (MMU) of GECOM has identified divisive reporting in several parts of the media, and particularly the Guyana Chronicle, which has breached the Media Code of Conduct.
In its commentary on the Guyana Chronicle, the MMU cited its editorial of March 10, 2015, captioned, `Make the right decisions on May 11’.
“The MMU takes issue with the editorial department of the newspaper for the general tone of the editorial, the unsubstantiated allegations made therein, and its unmistakably inflammatory nature.
“For starters, it did not miss our attention that in a somewhat devious ploy to justify what came after, the editorial started off by making specious and unsubstantiated allegations of a violent nature against the opposition political parties, namely APNU and AFC. The writer then goes on to conjure up a frightening sanguinary portent of the nation’s future should the aforementioned two opposition political parties accede to government after the forthcoming elections. This prediction by the writer is evident from the following chilling and wholly ill-conceived remarks (para. 4): `Cry a river of blood for our country, and for the annihilation of hope for peace in the nation as headlines scream the death-knell of the nations flowers while fountains of champagne celebrate the death of the innocents, because man’s inhumanity to man knows no boundaries, nor loyalties to kith, kin, or country; but only to the id and the ego – and the egomaniacs proliferate; and history resounds with the cries of their victims’”, the report said.
The MMU argued that the author of the editorial left no doubt in the minds of readers as to who are the supposed perpetrators of this as in the preceding paragraph to the one quoted above, it is clearly stated that, “The celebrations and toasts to the coalition’s victory herald a frightening scenario…..”
The MMU said that taken in its entirety or by sections, the editorial is in clear breach of Section B 2(C) of the Media Code of Conduct (MCC) which says in part that, “Gratuitous publication of…inflammatory language for sensational purposes is unacceptable”.
The MMU report further added that the editorial was “politically extremist and telegraphed a pernicious and sinister intent to create unnecessary fear, tension and insecurity in the country. In every respect also, it was antithetical to good order, peace and stability – the pre-requisites for a smooth and trouble-free elections process.”
The MMU then addressed the Guyana Chronicle editorial of March 14, 2015, captioned, “Participatory leadership”.
The MMU said that the writer touched on a number of issues which for the most part were scathingly critical of the PNC and AFC and full of praise for former president, Dr Cheddi Jagan and the PPP/C. Finding no fault with that, the MMU said that the final paragraph was problematic.
That paragraph said “The hardcore veterans whose charter includes utilization of all the Machiavellian strategies contained in the diabolical X-13 Plan are making the nation cry rivers of blood while the voice of reason has been silenced in the thunder of the canons that devastate the nation’s hope for a brighter future.”
Said the MMU: “In vain we tried to figure out the connecting thread between the preceding paragraphs in the editorial and the gist of the final one as quoted above. For us, the last paragraph represented a quantum shift by the writer, from keeping within the bounds of propriety to bizarrely nose-diving into the pits of the unsubstantiated and inflammatory.
“Moreover, quite disturbingly, the language used in the final paragraph is expressed in the present tense, giving the impression as it is, that the country is currently in some kind of dystopian state of internal upheaval spawned by bloodletting (“…the nation cry rivers of blood…”), when, in fact, such a scenario is far removed from reality”.
The MMU said that there was an uncanny similarity between the final paragraph of the editorial and the “Cry river of blood” theme in the newspaper’s March 10, 2015 editorial.
“It gives one the ineluctable impression that the newspaper’s editorial writer(s) has/have a fiendish fascination, nay, obsession, with extolling narratives of societal mayhem and gore, unmindful of the potential negative consequences of such indelicate penmanship. And in light of this observation, we asked ourselves the question: What does the management of the Guyana Chronicle Newspaper hope to gain by sanctioning the publication of editorial views/opinions intended to drive fear of a violent kind into the minds of citizens?”, the MMU stated.
The MMU report has raised an important question about the intent of the Chronicle’s editorials. With so much at stake for the PPP/C at the May 11 general elections, it appears intent on ratcheting up the messages of division with the intentions of pushing its electoral agenda. This is reprehensible and must come to a halt. An early purveyor of these messages was former President Bharrat Jagdeo in his now infamous presentation on March 8th at Port Mourant for which he now faces a private criminal charge. The ruling party must ensure that its speakers eschew this brand of wild talk.
The state media remains an anomaly in today’s information society and the government’s ruthless commandeering of it underlines this dilemma. While the Chronicle is not the only vehicle of this divisiveness and inflammatory rhetoric, as the state’s paper and the property of the people it, most of all, must desist from inciting and inflaming tensions.
