Media chickens come home to roost
Published:Tuesday | October 5, 2010 | 12:00 AM
The Editor, Sir:
Delano Seiveright, president of Generation 2000, the young professionals' group affiliated to the ruling Jamaica Labour Party, has been complaining that the privately owned media has not been giving sufficient credit to the Government for the good things it has been doing. If so, he has come to the party, so to speak, a bit late. The media chickens have long since come home to roost.
He needs to be reminded that one of the few policies on which both parties were in total agreement was the full scale 'liberalisation' and 'privatisation' of the media, with the government totally surrendering not just the commanding heights of the media to the private sector.
Chasing the dollar
So now that we have an abundance of private media houses, all chasing the ever-shrinking advertising dollar and fighting tooth and nail over market share, who is left to tell us the 'good news' of whatever it is the Government of the day is doing? Who is to propagate the desirable 'values and attitudes' most Jamaicans agree are necessary for national advancement?
This is one mistake we can't pin on the usual suspects, 'corruption' or 'political tribalism'. It's just like our failure to have a fixed exchange rate, as Belize and Barbados have, a mistake repeatedly noted by former prime minister Edward Seaga. So who, or what, will Seiveright blame now? Bad luck? Obeah?
I am, etc.,
ERROL W. A. TOWNSHEND
Scarborough, Ontario