Kaieteur News publisher Mohan “Glenn” Lall

Damage by muckraking to Guyana…

The almost universal negative coverage of the developing world by the Western media has been well studied and documented. The single most pertinent finding has been the insidious and deleterious effects that such coverage has had on the efforts the people in those countries to lift themselves out of the state of underdevelopment into which they had been cast during colonialism.

While Guyana, as part of the developing world, have also suffered from that negative coverage – either directly or through its replication by the local media – the analogous damage caused by the local sensationalist, Muckraking press and the correspondents they encourage, has been much greater. The most egregious local transgressors in this regard have been the Kaieteur News with its owner Mohan “Glenn” Lall, editor Adam Harris and the Stabroek News, Capitol News, along with some inveterate letter writers such as Lallbachan “Chris” Ram, Lincoln Lewis, Anand Goolsarran and Ruel Johnson, who are given limitless column inches while being conferred by authoritative-sounding titles.

Lallbachan “Chris” Ram

But this local subversion of Guyana’s image has received very little analysis or even comment. This article will attempt to rectify this oversight.

Why was the negative

image created?

The sensationalist yellow journalism might have begun as a device, in imitation of the model  launched in modern times by Rudolph Murdoch in England and America, to pander to the lowest common denominator, to generate greater profits.  But it soon morphed into a tool to further private, personal agendas. In Guyana, this took the form of supporting the opposition to oust the legally, democratically elected government of the day and to grind personal axes.

The initial attacks were made on the government where every initiative and every official was dubbed as “corrupt”. This was soon expanded to cover individuals who might have been friendly or associated in some way with the government,  for instance through  the winning of bids for governmental contracts.

Kaieteur News editor Adam Harris

The sustained viciousness and personalised nature of the attacks indicated that jealousy and spite might have dictated the negativity. In one particularly intense series of negative slanted articles, for instance, the owner of the Kaieteur News and his best friend who had won a bid for the largest department store in the country but ran it into the ground, attacked Dr Ranjisinghi Ramroop, who had secured the privatised national Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation, and turned it around into a very successful operation.

Another example were the attacks on BK International, and its owner Brian Tiwari, even though this company had performed a yeoman task in maintaining the sea wall and conservancies to keep Guyana literally from drowning.

Anand Goolsarran

How is the negative
image created?

Selective bias

There is firstly the selective publication of stories that fit in with the agenda of the opposition in general and the Kaieteur News/Stabroek News in particular, to determine what is “newsworthy”. The latter type of news can be called “disruptive” since they emphasise disruption, conflict, and exceptional events as opposed to stories that do not – “non-disruptive”. The selection were also  “event based” – reporting only on events that evoke the most extreme degree of sensationalism: murders, wife killings, robberies, incest, riots, etc, these would always get front page coverage with lurid headlines.

Lincoln Lewis

For instance, when reporting on a massacre in Agricola, the decapitated head of one victim was plastered on the front page.

Decontextualised bias

The facts of stories are also decontextualised – meaning that they are stripped of any historical, social, political, cultural or economic information that could explain them, help in making sense and relate them to other facts.

For instance, the criticisms of the Amaila Falls Hydro Electric Project, the Specialty Hospital, the Cheddi Jagan International Airport expansion and the Marriott Hotel were all demonised without placing them in the context of the World-Bank recommended development route for Latin America and the Caribbean to concentrate on infrastructural development – especially using the public private corporation financing model.

Ruel Johnson

When the government went ahead with the construction of the Marriott Hotel, because it utilised funds from its autonomous privitasition  unit, the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited   (NICIL), and could not be stymied by the opposition in Parliament, the spit-press savaged the head of the unit, Winston Brassington. (Refer to World-class Marriott Hotel on track!  on page 18)

Dramatised conflict bias

The events covered  by the opposition press are always described or dramatised  to imply dual conflicts between individuals and groups. The description is always highly personalised to present a Manichean, “good vs evil” picture. Reality, of course, is always more nuanced.

One particularly invidious conflict is the racial stereotyping and dehumanisation of individuals in the Kaieteur News’ crosshairs: the narrative invariably depicts Indian Guyanese  prevailing over African Guyanese and are intended to stir up racial hostilities.

The use of these simple binary oppositions always present the government in a bad light. For instance, to contrapose the government’s dealing with the public servants to the autonomous Guyana Sugar Corporation  (GuySuCo)’s treatment of sugar workers. In Guyana these are simple tropes for African and Indian.

Effects

The major effect is cognitive – how people, who are constantly bombarded with this sort of news, perceive and think of Guyana – and how their actions are influenced and guided by it. This process begins from childhood, so our children’s horizons are stunted before they even had a chance to discover and fulfil their own potential.

Identity, we know, is socially constructed, and the negative press coverage has a feedback effect in that Guyanese internalise the negative image and begin to project it in their actions. Littering is a perfect example: Guyanese do this on Guyana without any qualms but immediately upon reaching any other jurisdiction will cease immediately. In Guyana they are conditioned to devalue their native land.

Garbage has been an eye sore in the capital city of Georgetown and has been the major contributing factor to the flash flooding during rainy periods

After a while, the negative view is “naturalised” as it has by now in the overseas Guyanese population. More positive news, such as presented by this newspaper, for instance, or even on occasions by the spit press, are seen as “exceptions”. The negative image is internalised and become part of people’s “semantic memory” and repertoire and contributes to what is called the “social ignorance” of the people. They will literally dump in all manner of ways on Guyana.

This consistent negative portrayal of Guyana conjures up and fosters and image of a dangerous, unstable and chaotic country. Physically, we are seen as always in the throes of a flood, overtopped sea walls, broken conservancy dams. This is coupled with the societal  picture of Guyana as dominated with brutal and violent social conflicts.

Guyanese are afraid to return home for visits, much less invest here.

Culturally, Guyanese are presented as always “sporting” and partying – which becomes a self fulfilling prophesy after being internalised.

On a political level, the current stereotype is one of anarchic ethnic tribalism whereby the political competition  of the population is presented as being driven by primordial and irrational forces instead of competing value systems or  ideological differences.

As indicated above the other dominant charge is rampant corruption which is beaten into the heads of the populace with such Goebells – like frequency that it takes on the from of  folklore. The conclusion, frequently heard in the populace is that “nothing works” in Guyana. Self confidence is eaten away.

The end result is a dominant image of a country that is perpetually in crisis, without any hope of advancing without the intervention of outsiders. As in the acceptance by the opposition, the TUC  and the spit press that the U.S. can impose whatever they define as “democracy” on Guyana – even if the government disagrees.

Ultimately the reporting fosters the perception that Guyana is undemocratic, and incapable of self governance. Investors become convinced that investment here is a dangerous move. This has  diminished the power of representatives to bargain in international fora – business and political. International investors can easily find other locations where the conditions are not presented in such bleak terms.

Even if the negative reporting were to be reversed today, this negative perception would not disappear. The negative effects of negative informations cording to cognitive psychologists, any persist in the form of affects end after its original cognitive base has been invalidated.

The problems,  such as ethnic ones, are perceived as part and parcel of the national psyche, rather than creations of opportunistic politicians, which can be undone by appropriate programmes.

There is most insidiously, a delegitimisation of the Guyanese political, economic and social actors. If all the leaders really were corrupt, if there were no middle class entrepreneurs, if civil society were a mere collection of apathetic morons, then there would be really no hope for Guyana.

Economically, there are two dominant responses to this negative image. Most  investors refuse to invest in the country because of all the risks that have been portrayed as very prevalent. Guyana is increasingly becoming marginalised from global financial and trade flows and MNC’s move elsewhere. Local businessmen have also become so intimidated by the personalised attacks that they refuse to speak out against the muckraking press.

Secondly and ironically, investors and businessmen act  on the premise that the country as dysfunctional an insist on corrupting officials etc. When  President Ramotar pointed this out, the spit press ignored it.

What is to be done

Development news takes into account historical backgrounds and long term implications of located events. It does not fit the sensationalist model. And this is the model, as practiced by this newspaper, that must be accepted as normative for Guyana.

Guyanese needs to be able to conceive of a better future.