For­mer In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Pro­fes­sor Ramesh De­osaran is lend­ing his sup­port to both me­dia pro­fes­sion­als and Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith stance on the re­port­ing of sus­pect­ed gang lead­ers/mem­bers.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, De­osaran said Grif­fith’s pub­li­cised dis­plea­sure about the me­dia’s “glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of gang­sters” had at­tract­ed a spon­ta­neous de­nial by the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MATT) as well as sev­er­al jour­nal­ists, not­ing such de­nial rest­ed on “free­dom of the press.”

He said he be­lieves press free­dom is in­deed im­por­tant and added that since 1962, were it not for a ro­bust me­dia in this coun­try “po­lit­i­cal cor­rup­tion and abuse would have been worse.”

“How­ev­er, the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the me­dia, gangs and the po­lice has be­come a spe­cial case now de­serv­ing deep in­tro­spec­tion by me­dia them­selves. The gang prob­lem is now a se­ri­ous po­lit­i­cal prob­lem too,” De­osaran said.

“MATT says ‘Jour­nal­ists must re­port all sides.’ Grif­fith says ‘It is not a lev­el play­ing field.’ There are times when ed­i­tors should al­so think and act as cit­i­zens. Apart from the ma­te­r­i­al gains (mon­ey, guns, drugs, sex, hous­ing, etc), gang­sters crave and, ac­cord­ing to their rank, de­mand re­spect and recog­ni­tion both by gang mem­bers and mass me­dia. Like ter­ror­ists. It is the glue that con­sol­i­dates their pow­er and at­trac­tive­ness. Such deeply-root­ed cul­tur­al val­ues must be un­der­stood if al­ter­na­tives to the “gang cul­ture” are con­sid­ered,” he added.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew on Mon­day, Grif­fith crit­i­cised the me­dia’s cov­er­age of gang leader, es­pe­cial­ly in the wake of the re­cent po­lice raids in Port-of-Spain.

“At some point, we must un­der­stand that giv­ing promi­nence to per­sons of in­ter­est on­ly adds to the per­cep­tion and glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the gang men­tal­i­ty. Why are they (me­dia) so ea­ger to find the views and com­ments of the very few that sup­port crim­i­nals and ben­e­fit from crim­i­nal be­hav­iour?”

De­osaran, how­ev­er, not­ed that Grif­fith should add to his com­ments the ex­tent to which wide­spread me­dia pub­lic­i­ty of gang sus­pects al­so un­wit­ting­ly helps to per­pet­u­ate the be-jew­elled gang cul­ture and at­tract re­cruits.

“This is where the me­dia and the gen­er­al pub­lic would have had a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the Com­mis­sion­er’s gang­ster chal­lenges. And fur­ther, help en­cour­age the me­dia, in ad­di­tion to their press free­dom de­fence, think among them­selves whether a more ju­di­cious craft­ing of gang­ster-re­lat­ed sto­ries are jus­ti­fied in the dan­ger­ous cir­cum­stances fac­ing the coun­try. Nei­ther ab­solute cen­sor­ship nor un­re­strained re­portage,” De­osaran said.

Mak­ing ref­er­ence to al­le­ga­tions from Sea Lots busi­ness­man Cedric “Burkie” Burke against po­lice “mis­han­dling” of his chil­dren, De­osaran said that it should be re­port­ed but added that it is now for Grif­fith to re­spond.

He al­so men­tioned a pho­to­graph in the me­dia that showed for­mer Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal pub­licly shak­ing hands with Beetham Gar­dens res­i­dent Ken­neth “Span­ish” Ro­driguez at a con­struc­tion site in 2013, say­ing that it should be pub­lished.

“The in­sti­tu­tion­alised habit of politi­cians – from cen­tral to lo­cal gov­ern­ment – hand­ing out con­tracts out of fear or for vot­ing sup­port must be re­port­ed and con­demned. Hid­ing un­der the cov­er tech­ni­cal jar­gon and “wel­fare” projects no longer fool a dis­gust­ed pub­lic,” De­osaran said.

He added: “The rapid and sub­ver­sive es­ca­la­tion of gangs in this coun­try now en­dan­gers law­ful busi­ness, the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem and democ­ra­cy it­self. The me­dia seem to have missed the dan­gers dur­ing the ear­ly days. The per­verse, cor­rupt­ible link­ages be­tween cer­tain well-po­si­tioned politi­cians and gang­ster cli­en­tism be­gan fo­ment­ing since the sev­en­ties with Crash Pro­gramme and DEWD up to the nineties, where gangs be­came dis­guised “par­ty func­tionar­ies” promis­ing not on­ly “com­mu­ni­ty peace” but vot­ing sup­port.”

De­osaran, who said he was a first-hand wit­ness in 1981, ad­vised that the Gov­ern­ment should pro­vide good ed­u­ca­tion and sus­tain­able jobs in the var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties.