The perception I have without doing any serious research is that the news presented by our two senior television stations, TVJ and CVM, is about murder and blood, demonstrations and protests, fire and floods, and the misdemeanours of the Government and its agencies.
Maybe, of course, that is what has been happening, and according to the trade, news is a reflection of what is taking place in a society.
True, I am not a regular viewer of television news. I am usually on my way home at the time of the main news in the evenings. But when I do, I have been sure to find one of these TV news reporters standing beside a gaping pothole on a road where not even a bridle path should have been in the first place, another reporting on the cricket debacle in Australia, another standing before a demonstrator shouting about the absence of his or her Member of Parliament, or pointing to the "pools of blood" spreading on the roadway gushing from the body of a most innocent community leader who has been killed by the police.
I have yet to see, of course, the blood of a policeman who has been shot by a "gunboy", but then perhaps policemen do not have blood.
So imagine my shock when last Wednesday I saw the CVM newscast sans fire, sans screams by demonstrators, sans blood.
Instead the reports were of:
(a) a group of St. Andrew High School students not blocking Half Way Tree Road in St. Andrew but who had raised some $10,000 through a car wash to help to pay the medical expenses of a woman I do not think they knew;
(b) Labour Minister Donald Buchanan announcing that he was preparing a submission for the Cabinet to increase pension benefits from the National Insurance Scheme (NIS);
(c) A robber who was shot by the Police and there were no demonstrations describing the cops as wicked sons of Babylon;
(d) Two public relations successes, one by Alpart describing some of that bauxite company's community relations programmes, and the other on the fantastic sales being enjoyed by Desnoes and Geddes with its Red Stripe Light beer;
(e) The Police seeking a response by the public for its recent Citizens Charter which I think is too early;
(f) A cry from the St. Mary Chief of Public Health calling for new markets in the Parish to replace the present dumps without a choir behind him singing "Amens" and "Alleluias" ; and
(g) Residents of Rennock Lodge complaining, without screaming, about the environmental problems being caused by the Ethanol, Cement and Flour Mill factories and affecting their community.
Wrath
This newscast will not earn an award at this year's Press Association commendation to our journalists. It might even earn the wrath of some of our radio talk show hosts and their listeners complaining that "CVM has got soft".
For me, report the murders and the demonstrations, and the fires and asinine statements by some of the politicians-in-waiting-for-a-seat-in-Parliament.
But for heaven's sake let me hear about more of the good things being done by our children like those from St. Andrew High, and about an increase in my pension. If only the Ministry responsible would correct the spelling of the road sign and repair the road on which I live, which used to be free of chasms when Michael Manley lived on it.
