Kaieteur News caught lying again – must hold record of being caught lying more times than any printed media in the world

KAIETEUR News now must hold a world record – the Guinness Book World Record of being caught lying more times than any printed media in the world. Today (yesterday) they boldly printed a story that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the fearsome, police agency of the USA, is in Guyana questioning a number of senior Government officials and that the US Embassy has withdrawn the visas of four of these senior Government officials.The story was a blatant lie. It was made up and it was libelous to the Government of Guyana. It was also a lie against the US Government and the FBI. The US Embassy has denied the presence of FBI in Guyana and has denied that they withdrew the visas of any senior Government officials.

Now the Kaieteur News has responded that it was an April’s Fool Day story. This is a thief caught with his hands in the jar. The confession that this is a story that was an April Fool’s Day prank cannot now exonerate the Kaieteur News because the story fits a sick obsession and a strategy by the newspaper of misrepresenting facts and of telling stories that are not true with the clear intent to create a negative image of the Government. The fact is that in many places in Guyana and around the world, this story will remain with people who will continuously tell it as a fact.

Recently, Freddie Kissoon told a story of a private businessman and then after the fact stated that the story was one he heard, but had no evidence for.

These are just two recent examples that expose Kaieteur News and their public agenda to discredit the Government and its leaders without any shred of evidence. Sometimes they apologise and sometimes they merely ignore any concern expressed by citizens.

The truth is nothing in Kaieteur News can be believed. They have discredited themselves by being blinded by bitterness and hate. Bitterness and hate have clouded their judgment and have rendered the Kaieteur News from abandoning any semblance being a serious newspaper to becoming a rag to be ignored.

The people of Guyana cannot excuse Kaieteur News for a travesty that was never meant to be a joke. Having been caught they now defend themselves by saying that they were just joking. But they do this every day. They use various columns in their publication to spread rumours which become stories people spread as facts.

We do not lack a sense of humour in the Government and as Guyanese we are a people that have grown thick skinned. But there has to be a limit to people using public media to disguise a serious effort to libel people and then defend it as a joke. This is about media freedom. It is about the wicked misuse of media freedom. In other countries, Kaieteur News would have been resoundingly condemned and would have to face serious legal consequences. Yet in Guyana any effort to ensure Kaieteur News meet minimum standards of telling the truth would be regarded as restricting media freedom.

But enough is enough and we should all, whether we like this Government or not, rebuke the Kaieteur News for using April Fool as another of the various means to discredit Government officials.
This is the same publication that sees nothing wrong with a miller who sold rejected rice to Chile and left our market in Chile at jeopardy. Not a single line about a story that affects all rice farmers and the rice industry. But it is a genuine story of fact, a newsworthy story, yet because it linked to a Government critic; it is deemed as not newsworthy by Kaieteur News.
This is a publication that will find any court case in America to report, only as long as it relates to people they can link in one way or another, even if they need to make up something to (frame) Government officials. Yet when one of the officials who advises the APNU +AFC on rice has a judgment against him for US$20M and a warrant for his arrest, they ignore the story totally and treat it as not newsworthy.
This is a publication that blazed its headlines with stories of David Granger and others in the APNU+AFC brazenly accusing the Government of killing a citizen and then admitted they have no evidence, presented the story as fact. Yet without evidence, this publication highlights attack on Bharrat Jagdeo for raising the possibility that the Opposition has everything to gain from the killing of this citizen.
The Kaieteur News cannot escape condemnation. They should not escape condemnation. What does the APNU+AFC team say of this?
This is not an April Fool Day story.

By Dr Leslie Ramsammy