Perkins Ian Boyne
WITH ALL the signs of sickness around us some of which seem terminal one thing we can all agree on: The Press is healthy, robust and showing all the signs of vitality. Even if the cynical among us say that P. J. Patterson and his PNP administration only grudgingly and reluctantly refuse to tamper with press freedom, it has to be admitted that the PNP Government has allowed as much dissent as any democratic Government anywhere in the world.
The fact that talk-show hosts and their vociferous, belligerent and acrimonious callers can go on the air tomorrow morning to vehemently disagree with me is a very clear indication of the correctness of my view.
Michael Manley led a march on The Gleaner Company and said menacingly "Next time, next time!" and the JLP organised a march on the Jamaica Observer but the P.J. Patterson administration, despite the heavy fire under which it has come, has never in any way threatened the press. Indeed, the Patterson administration's record of dealing with dissent is unblemished.
Jamaica's press freedom has been hailed by international organisations and the prestigious Human Development Report, published by the United Nations Development Programme has put Jamaica's press freedom ratings ahead of many developed countries', including the United States'.
CROSS-OWNERSHIP
Jamaica does not have the concentration of power that exists in the American media empire, a concentration that was deepened by the ruling earlier in the year by the Federal Communications Commission, which relaxed ownership rules to allow for greater cross-ownership.
This past week Jamaican journalists celebrated another Journalism Week and in this the 60th year of the establishment of the Press Association of Jamaica. It is an appropriate time, then, to give a 'state of the media' report. We have come a far way from one dominant newspaper, two radio stations and one television station, to two strong national morning newspapers and a weekly, several community newspapers, three national television stations, numerous cable stations offering varied local programming, and 12 radio stations. We have moved from one major daytime call-in programme, The Public Eye, to a multiplicity of talk shows, literally from morning 'til night.
SIGNIFICANT INSPIRATION
We have moved from a situation where most journalists entered the profession straight out of high school and a number did not even get there to the point where many now have university degrees, many of them advanced degrees. Many of our better journalists are still going into public relations, on the hunt for liveable salaries and a middle class existence, but some are seeing that they can achieve that level of comfort in straight media. Cliff Hughes has been a significant inspiration to many journalists and is a phenomenon in several respects, but more on him later.
The Jamaican media have become more powerful than ever. The politicians really fear us. They read and listen to the most influential of us and we, to a large extent, condition, if not determine their agenda. No sensible politician can afford to ignore us totally. He can ignore some of us but not if a number of us decide that an issue is important and we are not allowing them to go away. (Small wonder that the darling of the press corps, Bruce Golding, was the one chosen to give the keynote address at the major PAJ function during Journalism Week. King-makers and slayers we are.)
Wilmot Perkins has fostered a culture of irreverence, rebellion and cutting-down-to-size of the politician, which has certainly caught on the Jamaican media culture. I have criticised Perkins' practice of journalism and have taken him to task more than any other Jamaican journalist.
ADMIRABLE
But I have to say this: he has manifested fearlessness, courage, defiance and a boundless capacity for nerve that is as admirable as it is rare. The subservience that some of us used to have toward politicians and powerful people is totally absent in Perkins. Sure, he is unfair, unbalanced and extremist at times. Many times. His courage to stand up to politicians spills over into disrespect and even rudeness at times.
But the arrogance of powerful
people must be countervailed and counteracted. Wilmot Perkins does a fine job of that. His contribution to Jamaican journalism cannot be erased.
Perkins has certainly demonstrated that to be a serious journalist does not mean that you have to be boring. Opinion journalists are allowed indeed expected to show their biases. In fact, the whole notion of objectivity is a myth, an outmoded philosophical concept. The sociologists of knowledge, epistemologists, and philosophers of science have all shown, with analytical brilliance, that we all have our presuppositions, biases, slanted perspectives. The postmodernists, the deconstructionists and the sceptics have all shown us that there is no "view from nowhere", no Archimedean point, no unmediated knowledge, no strict objectivity.
In the article 'Rethinking Objectivity' in the July/August 2003 issue of the respected Columbia Journalism Review, Brent Cunningham says, "Journalists (and journalism) must acknowledge, humbly and publicly, that what we do is far more subjective and far less detached than the aura of objectivity implies and the public wants to believe." In 1996 the United States Society of Professional Journalists came into the light philosophically and dropped the word "objectivity" from its ethics code. If the journalists had read Thomas Kuhn's path-breaking book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, decades ago they would have dropped the word have long ago. Better still they should have read philosophers David Hume and Immanuel Kant.
BIAS, OBJECTIVITY
While some journalists like to say columnists are allowed to be biased but news reporters have to be strictly objective, they are also behind in their reading. News reporters are not neutral beings from outer space who have no views and whose news reports are exact carbon copies of objective reality.
What is the news? Who determines what of the multiplicity of things which come across an editor's or a reporter's desk is news? News is determined by a whole host of social, political and cultural factors. In his still highly respected 1979 book, Deciding What's News, Sociologist Herbert Gans says bluntly, "Journalists cannot exercise news judgment without a composite of nation, society and national and social institutions in their collective heads, and this picture is an aggregate of reality judgments." He says that typically the journalist in Western society is formed by a set of capitalist values what he calls the journalist's 'paraideology'.
We can't be objective, but we can be fair, balanced, honest and impartial. That we can do. A journalist might not like P. J. Patterson, but he must give space and opportunity for Patterson and his supporters to defend a contrary view. In terms of fairness in news reporting, I believe our media do an excellent job except when it comes to reporting on police shootings and conflicts with the police. There is a decidedly anti-police bias in news reporting but that's another issue.
TVJ and CVM do an excellent job of responsible reporting on the political parties, for example. But Radio Jamaica deserves a special lifetime award for impartiality, fairness and responsible reporting. It should be specially honoured by the Press Association of Jamaica for being a model of fair, trustworthy journalism in the country. The Gleaner displays no discernible bias toward any political party. The Observer, which practices more of what is called New Journalism and which steers away from the traditional bland reporting mixing editorialising with reportage has been accused of exhibiting bias in some areas. The paper certainly is not predisposed toward JLP leader Edward Seaga, to say the least. (The media in general have a tendency to be unfair to Eddie Seaga, but that's another matter again).
The Observer has one of the finest journalists in the region as
editor, Paget deFreitas, and he has built the paper into a highly engaging forum for cutting-edge news and enlightening opinions. If you are tired of a certain parochialism in the Jamaican media, you can turn to Observer columnists John Maxwell, Wayne Brown and Claude Robinson. (Christopher Burns on a Monday adds some insightful thoughts, too.)
The Gleaner has made significant strides in product improvement under Garfield Grandison, who must be the most open editor when it comes to new ideas. He has distinctly rejected the "dumbing down of readers" view which is gaining currency in Western journalism, (the tabloidisation of journalism) and his creation of this In Focus section where people can read long, reflective, scholarly articles puts him in a special class of editors. In April even the notable Washington Post launched the Sunday Source, a hip weekly that shuns stories longer than four paragraphs! And in August the Post began publishing Express "which makes USA Today look ponderous", according to the October/November, 2003 issue of American Journalism Review.
LOWEST COMMON
DENOMINATOR
Grandison has stood against the tide of just catering to the lowest common denominator and has insisted that serious local readers should not have to turn to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times to be abreast of serious issues.
It's time now for my awards for the year. The Press Association of Jamaica continues the shoddy practice of depending on journalists' submitting their own work for awards. What the PAJ should do is to have people seriously monitoring the media all year round for excellence and making awards based on that observation and assessment, rather relying on journalists to remember the deadlines for entry. I, for one, usually forget when it's time to submit work and, quite frankly, should not have to do that. A serious press association must have a wide-ranging panel of persons who are not out of the island most of the time and who can critically assess media output. Otherwise they diminish
the awards. My readers, viewers
and listeners will decide whether
this is a just sour grapes or justified comment.
My journalist of the year is Cliff Hughes. Hughes is the Jamaican newsman par excellence: He has passion, drive, and excitement for the journalistic craft. There is no journalist in this country who has a keener sense of news than Cliff Hughes. Nobody can beat him in putting together a gripping news and analysis package. There is none other who can cover and uncover news with more style and substance. Cliff is a first-rate journalist who, as I said before, could take his place in the finest media organisations anywhere in the world. His reportage on the Lee Boyd Malvo case on CVM TV's Impact establishes his preeminence as a world-class newsman. First-class journalism.
Cliff Hughes is a fair journalist. Yes, he goes overboard sometimes and is occasionally overdosed on adrenaline. His cup of passion sometimes runs over. But the fact that some people in the PNP and JLP can't stand him is one of the finest tributes to him. His interviewing skills are sharp and incisive and unequalled among reporters. Journalist of the Year without competition.
But Cliff has to gauge his entrepreneurial drive. He is in danger of shortchanging his audience with the much-too-frequent and boring sponsored, PR programmes which he is doing. Cliff is exhibiting some of the weaknesses and pitfalls in the Western, particularly American, media: Over commercialisation, and the quest for money squeezing out the public interest. After his cutting-edge 5:30 p.m. slot on Power 106 slot and his news at 6:00 he now frequently goes into his money-earning PR binge, totally losing his audience. I am tuning him off now at 6:00. It is an excellent opportunity now for RJR to start cutting into his audience and doing some cutting-edge pieces for 6:00 p.m.
PUNISHMENT
Audiences must punish outstanding journalists like Cliff Hughes if they allow the drive for financial success to interfere with their obligations to spend more time stimulating debate and discussion. The same thing should apply to his Impact
programme. We can't mix PR with journalism.
The best producer on Jamaican television is Anthony Miller, who produces Entertainment Report. Fame-FM's Uncensored is the best-produced, most interesting discussion programme on radio.
CVM TV's Our Voices is the best-produced new show on television. The columnist with his ears most to the ground and with the most engrossing style is Mark Wignall.The columnists who work hardest on their columns are John Maxwell, Robert Buddan and Earl Bartley. The most competent behind-the-story newsman of depth is Earl Moxam. The most consistently interesting morning talk show is the Breakfast Club. (Independent talk is being killed by over-comercialisation).
In general, we are not doing too badly in the Jamaican media but we need greater depth, intellectual rigour and greater vigilance in guarding the interests of the Jamaican people against corporate power, not just political power.
