Pao­lo Ker­na­han

You have prob­a­bly heard this one be­fore but it bears re­peat­ing in light of re­cent events at a post-Cab­i­net pro­pa­gan­da ses­sion. When I was a dib­by re­porter I was sent to cov­er your ba­sic plac­ard school protest out­side of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. When I got there all of the par­ents sit­ting vex on the pave­ment in front of the min­istry wait­ing for us to ar­rive.

Typ­i­cal­ly a protest would not start un­til they saw the cam­era equip­ment be­ing rolled out. At times we were tempt­ed to sim­ply dri­ve past, ob­scured from view by the dark tint. That way the protest nev­er re­al­ly hap­pened. If a tree falls in the for­est... On this day I didn't, I re­turned to the of­fice with the sto­ry and sat down be­fore an an­cient type­writer to klax! klax! klax! my so­porif­ic tale. My head of news with slick, rock­a­bil­ly hair­do and grave­ly, two-pack-a-day voice, sum­mons me in­to his of­fice and seat­ed there in an al­most un-nav­i­ga­ble fog of cig­a­rette smoke was the then Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion. "Pao­lo, the min­is­ter would like to see your script." I hand­ed it to him, so naive was I, think­ing that he had come to of­fer his of­fi­cial re­sponse. The min­is­ter bare­ly gets past the first line be­fore he says, "No this is not your sto­ry, I will tell you what your sto­ry is." Thor­ough­ly emas­cu­lat­ed, I re­turned to my desk now a eu­nuch re­porter.

It was Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh, once a man of the cloth now a man of the bal­isi­er, who re­mind­ed me of this in­ci­dent. You know, if jour­nal­ists and politi­cians un­der­stood each oth­er's re­spec­tive roles, the con­fu­sion and vit­ri­ol would not have been nec­es­sary. It amazes me that re­porters at­tend these post-Cab­i­net brain­wash­ing ses­sions ex­pect­ing to wring some sort of news con­tent out of them. Swarats­ingh bel­lows from the podi­um, "It al­ways amazes me that you choose to spend the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence think­ing about what you want to ask a per­son who is not present!" Well, it amazes me that he thinks we don't know that these min­is­ters are made to be ab­sent so that no one has to hand around the Ude­cott hot pota­to. That has to rank high among some of the most ir­re­triev­ably stu­pid re­marks I've heard in my life­time. It is ob­vi­ous that if the press­ing mat­ter is Ude­cott, jour­nal­ists will come armed with rel­e­vant ques­tions, whether or not the line min­is­ter is asked to wait in the broom clos­et un­til the con­fer­ence is over.

This has al­ways been the case. When peo­ple are be­ing felled across the coun­try by gun­fire, Mar­tin Joseph dis­ap­pears. When there is a brief lull, he resur­faces at the post-Cab­i­net hyp­no­sis ses­sion to yam­mer on about mean­ing­less sta­tis­tics and to re­mind us how un­hap­py he is with the mur­der rate. When­ev­er there is a con­tro­ver­sial is­sue en­gag­ing the Gov­ern­ment, they shove the poor Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter on­to the podi­um. Al­so mak­ing reg­u­lar ap­pear­ances is Cab­i­net favourite, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mustapha Ab­dul-Hamid, who is al­most nev­er like­ly to have any se­ri­ous in­quiry aimed at him.

Then of course there is the ul­ti­mate block­er, Neil Parsan­lal, whose sole re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, it seems, is to de­flect ques­tions, crit­i­cise the me­dia, and de­liv­er ill-in­formed and tor­tur­ous lec­tures on me­dia stan­dards.

Swarats­ingh con­tin­ues, "Un­for­tu­nate­ly, you do not get to make those de­ci­sions as to who comes to the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence..." And there­in lies the se­cret to a re­porter's hap­pi­ness: un­der­stand­ing that the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence is pri­mar­i­ly a mech­a­nism by which the Gov­ern­ment us­es you to spread its good-news mes­sage to the peo­ple. This was nev­er con­ceived as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to prod the ad­min­is­tra­tion over is­sues which ul­ti­mate­ly con­cern the pub­lic. As for the politi­cians, when they are able to un­der­stand that not every re­porter in this coun­try is em­ployed by the Gov­ern­ment In­for­ma­tion Ser­vice, that the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the me­dia (in my opin­ion) is to pro­vide cit­i­zens with ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion about the Gov­ern­ment's han­dling of the coun­try, then we can see the be­gin­ning of a dif­fer­ent kind of re­la­tion­ship. We are not here to broad­cast beam­ing smiles at yet an­oth­er rib­bon-cut­ting, an­oth­er sod-turn­ing, an­oth­er stand­pipe-open­ing!

Right now the hon­ey­moon is over for Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma in the US and now he is en­gaged in the busi­ness of a bit­ter mar­riage with the Fox News Net­work. The ad­min­is­tra­tion has tak­en a de­ci­sion to re­sist ap­pear­ing on any tele­vi­sion pro­grammes pro­duced by that net­work, in­stead opt­ing to shut­tle the movie star Pres­i­dent off to yet an­oth­er ap­pear­ance on the David Let­ter­man Show. This par­tic­u­lar news net­work, which is the es­tab­lished and un­abashed bull­horn for the Re­pub­li­can Par­ty, is purs­ing a cam­paign to fo­ment pub­lic an­i­mus over the Pres­i­dent's boy­cott of the net­work. Most me­dia an­a­lysts in the States agree that it is a de­cid­ed­ly reck­less move on the part of the White House. Fox can use this to ig­nite a cause among its con­stituents; and if Oba­ma tru­ly be­lieves that the net­work's view­ers are pri­mar­i­ly jerky chompin', deer shootin', Bible thumpin' cretins, then he is in for a rough term in of­fice. The me­dia land­scape has changed in this coun­try and me­dia hous­es are sim­ply no longer pre­pared to tol­er­ate a min­is­ter bawl­ing be­hind jour­nal­ists.

Mr Swarats­ingh, there is al­so some­thing that you need to con­sid­er: you could "cuss way" the me­dia all you want, but the new gen­er­a­tion of blog­ger has moved com­men­tary from the con­ven­tion­al for­mat. This means that every­one is a jour­nal­ist and the In­ter­net's vi­ral na­ture can spread dis­con­tent faster than tra­di­tion­al broad­cast and print me­dia. So al­lyuh go ahead! You politi­cians con­tin­ue to make one fun­da­men­tal mis­take. In deny­ing the me­dia you be­lieve that you are keep­ing your boot on a re­cal­ci­trant mi­nor­i­ty; but when you douse that small fire, you in­flame the pub­lic be­cause they are who we rep­re­sent. So con­tin­ue to send ir­rel­e­vant min­is­ters to the podi­um if you tink de peo­ple so chupid!