Fay­ola KJ Fras­er

A se­nior re­porter/pro­duc­er at CNC3 and the week­end news an­chor, Da­reece Po­lo has had many years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the me­dia but is a fresh face on the news­cast. Po­lo, be­liev­ing that “I didn’t choose me­dia, me­dia chose me”, pur­sued her ca­reer as an ex­ten­sion of her bold and fear­less per­son­al­i­ty. “I was al­ways a pub­lic speak­er and un­afraid of shar­ing my opin­ions,” she says, with the con­vic­tion that it was these core at­trib­ut­es that swayed her away from her ini­tial ideas of pur­su­ing med­i­cine and psy­chol­o­gy and nudged her to­wards the me­dia.

Po­lo was raised in a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty in Moru­ga, where the is­sues of her com­mu­ni­ty were not high­light­ed or well-known by the pub­lic, leav­ing the com­mu­ni­ty to cope on its own. She de­scribed the way that they felt shut out from the wider pub­lic nar­ra­tive, and is­sues such as lack of run­ning wa­ter, and ter­ri­ble road ac­cess were nev­er brought to light, and there­fore, nev­er im­proved. It is these cir­cum­stances of the com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing her up­bring­ing that have shaped her ded­i­ca­tion to telling sto­ries of the voice­less and mar­gin­alised in so­ci­ety. Lead­ing with the heart, Po­lo aims to use the me­dia as a chan­nel to en­sure that all peo­ple can have their prob­lems high­light­ed with com­pas­sion and in­tegri­ty at the cen­tre.

Fol­low­ing her As­so­ciate De­gree in Jour­nal­ism and Pub­lic Re­la­tions at COSTAATT, Po­lo be­gan work­ing at CL Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (IETV) in 2015. The tran­si­tion from school­ing to the pro­fes­sion, how­ev­er, was not as seam­less as she hoped. For her first sto­ry, she was tasked with writ­ing a press re­lease, and “had no idea what she was do­ing”, tak­ing a full day to com­plete it. She grew more con­fi­dent as time went by and gained more ex­pe­ri­ence. To hone her skills, she pur­sued a Bach­e­lor of Arts at COSTAATT in Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

In 2019, Po­lo’s ca­reer took an ex­cit­ing turn, tak­ing her to the shores of Ecuador, where she worked as an as­sis­tant pro­gramme ed­i­tor and an an­chor at an Eng­lish tele­vi­sion sta­tion.

She de­scribed this pe­ri­od as deeply en­rich­ing, even dur­ing the throes of COVID-19, and her ca­reer stand­out sto­ry hap­pened in Ecuador. Be­ing un­able to come home due to bor­ders be­ing closed and COVID-19 re­stric­tions she im­mersed her­self in­to the coun­try. While in­no­cent­ly mak­ing her way about in pub­lic trans­port, there was a pub­lic demon­stra­tion about the in­creas­ing prices of fu­el that be­came vi­o­lent. A mil­i­tary ve­hi­cle was de­ployed by the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure pro­test­ers would not reach the Pres­i­dent, and Po­lo wit­nessed the bomb­ing of that ve­hi­cle by pro­test­ers with Molo­tov cock­tails. “As a civil­ian, it was scary to be in the midst of a push­back for the first time,” she re­mem­bers, “but as a re­porter, it was any jour­nal­ist’s dream”. Not be­ing from the coun­try or Latin Amer­i­ca more gen­er­al­ly, she felt she im­bibed a tru­ly diplo­mat­ic, nu­anced per­spec­tive in­to her writ­ing of the sto­ry, mak­ing it a mem­o­rable high­light in her ca­reer.

Rein­te­grat­ing in­to the cul­ture of the T&T me­dia af­ter her time in Ecuador was smooth for Po­lo, as she stayed abreast of our news and me­dia. The greater chal­lenge has been her re­cent tran­si­tion in­to an­chor­ing, which has come with some new nerves. She is fo­cused on be­ing a cham­pi­on of the truth, a per­son the pub­lic can trust, and  “not on­ly telling the sto­ry, but un­der­stand­ing the sto­ry, the emo­tions, and telling the pub­lic what is im­por­tant about it”. Al­though Po­lo has not been an an­chor for a long time, peo­ple call out to her on the streets, and even when they don’t know her name, they shout out “CNC3!” Po­lo con­sid­ers this as a rep­re­sen­ta­tion that she is con­nect­ing with view­ers, and re­mains fo­cused not on be­ing seen, but on telling sto­ries that mat­ter.

Aside from her tal­ent in the me­dia, Po­lo har­ness­es a se­cret tal­ent, her ‘sweet han’! A self-pro­claimed “food lover”, she finds joy in try­ing new foods–with the dis­claimer that the on­ly thing she won’t eat is some­thing that is still alive. Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic in Ecuador, be­ing far from home, her fam­i­ly and loved ones, Po­lo used cook­ing and ex­per­i­ment­ing with foods as a way to cope with the dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od and al­so to con­nect with home.

What’s her best dish? A creamy shrimp Al­fre­do, burst­ing with flavour, filled with fresh herbs and a se­cret in­gre­di­ent. Con­trary to her line of work as a re­porter, in which an un­cov­ered se­cret is break­ing pub­lic in­for­ma­tion, Po­lo holds this par­tic­u­lar se­cret close to her chest.

A new face on CNC3’s news­cast but a stal­wart in the kitchen, Da­reece Po­lo is mak­ing her rise in the in­dus­try. She has a unique com­mit­ment to de­vel­op­ing sto­ries and is work­ing to en­sure voic­es from all cor­ners of the coun­try are mag­ni­fied.