I write to commend your reporter Daraine Luton, and The Gleaner itself, for the excellent 'balancing' story, 'MP faces arrest' published recently.

One of my recent columns dealt with how media frame news stories, privileging some angles of a story, while suppressing others.

While framing is an inevitable element of the business of journalism, great care - and great pains - should be taken for the greatest degree of fairness and balance possible.

Media riding-horse

Some earlier news reports on the triangular incident in Norris, St Thomas, involving the police, a wanted man and the member of parliament for the area and junior minister in the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), James Robertson, almost gleefully gave the impression that a big fish politician was caught red-handed in breach of the law and consorting with criminal elements.

The event was a godsend to the media, underscoring the media riding-horse point that politicians are inherently corrupt and are likely to consort with criminal elements. 'See it there now!'

Daraine's story, backed by police testimony at the level of ACP Les Green and an interview with the 'villain politician', established as a material fact of the case, that MP Robertson acted with the knowledge of the Police High Command to rescue a man, criminal or otherwise, whom it is alleged a policeman or men attached to the Jamaica Constabulary Force in St Thomas wanted dead.

In search of villains

The man, who was helping the police with an investigation of professional misconduct within the ranks of the police in St Thomas, was treated at the Kingston Public Hospital and released into the custody of a senior police officer in Kingston.

Ever in search of villains, the media may now be tempted to reframe the story with the St Thomas police as the inferred villain of the piece.

The business of the news media is to report as fairly and in as balanced a manner as possible, the unfolding events.

Let the courts determine the villains and the knights [Robertson thinks he should be knighted!]

I am, etc.,

MARTIN HENRY

medhen@gmail.com

Kingston 19