Orville W. TaylorLAST WEEK, a convicted Jamaican had his death sentence commuted to life. Yet, Stanley "Tookie" Williams, co-founder of the Crips street gang in the United States of America, met the grim reaper on Tuesday last as he was executed after 24 years on death row. California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, had made no promise to save him. So, he does not have to reprise his famous lines "I lied!" However, one can't avoid feeling a bit let down given that Tookie was made to languish for so long under circumstances where the majority of white-dominated countries, including the European Union, would be forced to spare him. Indeed, the governor's native country, Austria, is so upset with him that there are calls for national monuments erected in his honour, to be renamed. Perhaps, they will be easily-pronounced names such as Kwame or Tyrone.
Whatever were the arguments for or against Schwarznegger or the execution, it is now a fait accompli. Williams was killed by lethal injection and it shows that one little prick can end a dream. I don't know if he was innocent as he claimed but I believe that the victims' families feel avenged. Let's hope that he was really guilty.
I did not particularly want to start on the crime issue or even to focus on the perpetrators, since as the Gleaner's chairman and managing director Oliver Clarke revealed at last week's Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ) awards, there is too much focus by the press on the criminals and not enough on the victims. This is a good point and I applaud the self-criticism since all of us who are media 'spin doctors' need to look critically at ourselves.
So be it!
IMAGE IS EVERYTHING
The motto on my shared talk show is: "We're not just talk, we are substance." While I generally agree with this, I have to say that image is everything and it does not only matter what is done but more so, how it is done.
The PAJ awards ceremony was my first and as with a certain politician, I always expect a bang. Yet, though I am a 'media baby' I was rather unimpressed. Whatever was the reason for its apparent demise and the now valiant attempt by Desmond Richards to restore it to a fabled golden age, the show was less 'gilded' than 'gelded.'
First of all, I cannot understand why media personnel, so good at keeping press deadlines and on-air timing, can never seem to start a meeting, ceremony or function punctually. The stage-show like delay was as ironic as my first 'all-media' party, where only a few persons attended, due to what I understood to be poor publicity and communication. The PAJ ceremony was a 'media' or 'medium' event because it was just a trifle bigger than small.
But, tardiness is a black/ Caribbean phenomenon so that is the least of the shortcomings. Chief of the panel of judges, Ben Brodie, unfairly lashed out against the apparent incapacity of some of the entrants to understand simple instructions. Thus, entries were misdirected into categories that they ought not have been submitted to. Then, as if he did not belong to the press generation that 'public schooled' the present cohort of non-reading youths, he lamented that "people don't read".
FAILURE TO MAKE
LEARNING ATTRACTIVE
Well, I don't know where he has 'Ben' but apart from the other obvious factors such as the educational system and the preponderance of electronic games, the thinkers, within and outside the academy and media are responsible. We have failed to make learning attractive although we have to compete for the minds of young people. The Jurassic press have not kept "up to the time" as Vybz Cartel declares. Rather, writers have engaged in an incestuous, narcissistic, act of cerebral self-fondling and mutual back-patting. They are either writing for their colleagues in their quaint parochial 'pseudo-intellectualisms' or they write for their friends in the 'bored' rooms.
Simply put, (and they should try this sometimes) they don't know to engage. Let's ask ourselves honestly. How many opinion writers can boast of hearing the average 'men at risk' 18-24 year old saying that he reads past the first 100 words in one's column or story?
As regards the specifics of Brodie's peeve, why did he not consider the very real possibility that the instructions were just not properly or plainly given? We in the media still make too many faux pas in grammar and diction. For example, even if we only possess 'newspaper voices' and we have an 'axe' to grind, we need to remember that the word 'ask' is not a homophone or homonym for that chopping tool. Many black Caribbeans and African Americans make the mistake in pronunciation. Well, we need to teach our young listeners who would emulate our diction (both syllables) that that word is correctly vocalised when 'ass' goes before the 'ks'. The reverse stinks.
PRESS AWARDS
Still, I like the idea of press awards. However, I want to see peers and non-peers who are media and socially sensitive, making them. Judges must be chosen from a deep pool and should not be generationally challenged. Furthermore, when there are nominees for a category, we need to see something about the number of them and the finalists. The anecdotal reference in the form of special mentions is grossly insufficient.
While I accept that the PAJ is dragging itself from out of its state of languor, it is nonetheless more than 60 years old. Unlike its human equivalent, it should have got stronger with age. We must investigate why it fell into 'disrepair' so as to effect its progress and prevent it reoccurring. By the way, for an all-media event, it lacked good preceremony publicity.
Dr. Orville Taylor is senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at the University of the West Indies, Mona.
