I recently listened to an illuminating interview with a veteran British broadcaster who was looking back on 50 years in the industry.
A Life in Television: Sir Trevor McDonald was put on by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). Peppered with numerous anecdotes of adventure in a long, rewarding life in journalism, the interview also touched on Sir Trevor's abiding faith in the news to produce a better world.
Perhaps more familiar to older generations, Sir Trevor was born in Trinidad and had modest beginnings in broadcasting here. Nurtured on the BBC World Service with stories spanning the far corners of the earth, he resolved early on that international journalism was his calling. In 1969, he journeyed to Britain, chasing echoes of those globe-trotting correspondents he heard as a youth.
Sir Trevor would go on to ascend the ranks in journalism in the UK. He was shipped off to dangerous conflict zones and earned coveted interviews with despots, presidents, freedom fighters and other shapers of world events. Sir Trevor's look back, recounting stories filed from war ravaged countries or bearing witness to the full arc of revolutionary struggle, is the stuff of swashbuckling journalism legend; never mind his abhorrence of violence in any variety. Later, in assuming the anchor seat, he became one of the most respected broadcasters around the world.
Sir Trevor was perhaps less focused on the path he was cutting as a black man on television in the UK. To hear him tell it, he simply wanted to be regarded as a journalist and was willing to do any assignment asked of him. That attitude probably had something to do with the accolades that followed. A Double BAFTA recipient, Royal Television Society Gold Medal, OBE, Sir Trevor's mantelpiece is probably groaning beneath the weight of his achievements. After retiring from the news anchor seat, he dove into the documentary format, exploring death row in the United States, the mafia and even islands of the Caribbean (including Trinidad).
As Sir Trevor explained to the BAFTA audience, keeping people in the know is fundamental to the advancement of civilisations. Listening to him got me wondering what his career in journalism would have been had he stayed in Trinidad.
As it happens, we seem to perceive news in a decidedly different way. The what, why, who and how have been supplanted by the "what it is happm?" So much of our reporting is hewn from brain-misfires of politicians or public figures. The government makes a statement, the reporter gets a reply from the Opposition and the burden of balance has been met!
Very few of our reports have the ballast of context or background. Consequently members of the public, fed on coverage built around "he say, she say," respond with the only information they have; their misguided political loyalties.
There is news, "Three murdered in 24 hours" and information, "What are the root causes of violent crime?" It is in the information area we fall short. Ironically, with more media houses than ever before, we have less useful information.
Worse still, our coverage is increasingly insular. Case in point: the unfolding crisis in Venezuela, our close neighbour to the south. This country is in the throes of economic disaster, compounded by long-running political instability. Yet, to my knowledge, there has been little coverage of Venezuela by local media.
It is outrageous that news of a crisis, separated from us by only a few miles, comes almost entirely from international sources. With a heavy dependence on oil, 80 per cent food imports, collapsed health care and rampant violent crime, Venezuela could be a mirror of our future selves. That's the short list of justifications for sending reporters there.
Already there have been warnings that Caribbean nations should anticipate a refugee crisis stemming from this besieged South American country.
That's not to say there aren't journalists straining at their leashes to cover the story. I'm sure there are many. It's more likely our media houses, typically tight-fisted with budgets, won't even pony up for a plane ticket for a reporter armed with a smartphone or GoPro camera. It is easier and cheaper to fill the news hour with conferences, seminars and crime. And where is the incentive to do better anyway? The newspapers and newscasts, for the most part, seem thick with advertising and readers and viewers dutifully choke down the daily pablum.
The T&T media industry Sir Trevor McDonald left behind a lifetime ago has shrunk in scope. He would have worked in an era when local journalists espoused the same high standards of professionalism and understood the value of news to a developing society. Sadly, today's newsrooms seem stunted by a vision that doesn't go past 7 pm or when the paper is put to bed.
Sir Trevor's zealous interpretation of news as a societal institution appears to have somehow leached out of our once venerable media. The sage voices are gone, the news business is now just business.
Once outward looking people have turned their backs, happily regaled by blinkered hacks.