Dawn Ritch, Columnist

The style of the press, we're told, has been cramped by their being prevented from sitting in the Hansard Box at the House of Representatives.

What nonsense! How cramped is it in the press box anyway? During most parliamentary sessions, it's empty but for a few hardy souls.

Nobody covers Parliament seriously, and when they do, we're still at a loss to know what exactly transpired.

I certainly don't want members of the press around the person taking the official record of proceedings.

Such a baleful influence and distraction would most certainly endanger the accuracy of that record. What really happened would then be lost forever.

There seems to be too much enthusiasm for the muddying of these waters. It cannot be right for any member of the press to use a telephoto lens to take a photograph sneakily over the Prime Minister's shoulder, and publish her doodles.

Even if the reporter/photographer was bored to death, reading what's on her desk while she's doodling and doubtless peeking into her handbag when it's open, makes a spy of him. It does not diminish her stature in any way.

No one is supposed to know the contents of one's doodles, except as a voluntary act of the doodler. Next, the press will be clearing out Mrs. Simpson Miller's garbage can, logging the contents and having them analysed. This is poor, petty, vindictive treatment of a sitting prime minister, who seems to have caused them a great deal of displeasure.

PAJ interview

How has she so offended them? The Prime Minister gave an on-the-record and off-the-record interview to the president of the Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ), Desmond Richards, who is also the associate editor of the Sunday Herald. If Mrs. Simpson Miller had spoken about the Trafigura affair to the PAJ vice-president, secretary or treasurer, she could be accused of favouritism and hiding.

This was at the beginning of the Trafigura episode and she hasn't addressed the matter since. Not with the press anyway, only with the nation in the House of Parliament.

Instead of being impressed by her good form and sense of protocol, the press has accused poor Desmond Richards of getting a scoop. Since when was this a sin?

One lawyer sympathetic to the Jamaica Labour Party, even went so far as to ask him on radio why he merited an interview with the Prime Minister. Very coolly, Mr. Richards replied that he called Jamaica House and asked.

I don't know how many reporters called Jamaica House and can't be bothered to ask. But if Madam Prime Minister chooses to speak, for the time being, only to the president of the PAJ, I have absolutely no quarrel with that.

Is the press ridiculing Mr. Richards because he's a 'darkie' and risen from the same social class as she? Perhaps they think the similarity between them suggests a personal affinity which the press finds galling.

In any event, the Jamaica Observer was subsequently moved to publish her parliamentary doodles on their front page. I wonder who they think this mocks? Them, or her? Who do they believe the country regards as tasteless and crass?

Forensic psychologists are interested in this sort of thing. I must confess an interest too, though untrained. The press has said she drew a wine glass or a champagne flute, a beer mug, an outline of a man and a triangle. They have, therefore, suggested that she was thinking about a celebration, and Bruce Golding.

Well I know for a fact that Mrs. Simpson Miller doesn't drink liquor. So why she'd have drawn images associated with it in a celebration, and intend them to be personal is beyond me. She takes a glass of something just to be polite, and never drinks it. So I confess myself completely baffled by two of the illustrations, in so far as they have any personal relevance to her at all. In fact, one of them looks like a water heater to me.

'Hot water' may have some personal relevance I suppose, but she seems pretty calm to me. So perhaps the 'hot water' applies to the Opposition Leader, as well as the champagne glass, a case of 'Chicken Merry Hawk is Near.' Because certainly, the neck of the man doodle is long enough for a noose, and his hands are in a submissive pose, which then rather makes the triangle a trap door.

No law against doodling

There is no law against doodling. Neither in the Standing Orders of the House of Parliament, nor in Erskine May Parliamentary Practice. I know this because I spoke on the telephone to the Clerk of the House of Parliament, Mrs. Heather Cooke.

She told me that the House of Commons in the United Kingdom has its own broadcasting unit, which feeds information to media there, and it is done by contract.

This is in order to ensure that, "a full, balanced, fair and accurate account of the proceedings" is given, and that "the dignity of the House and its function as a working body, rather than as a place of entertainment" is respected.

The Clerk of the House said these quotations were taken from the 'First Report from the Select Committee on Broadcasting, etc from the House of Commons.'

She then continued, saying that, in 1978, in England, regular sound broadcasting was introduced to both the House of Lords and the Commons. In 1985, television was introduced to the Lords, and in 1989 the Commons. This was being done Britain said, on an "experimental basis."

Since Jamaica follows parlia-mentary procedure as practised in the Westminster model, the House Speaker acted properly. He may grant, according to the law, a "general permission" for the press to be there but "under such rules" that "if contravened," he may act. These are the rules. They have been followed.

Opposition Leader Bruce Golding may, according to him, want the press looking over his shoulder. That may be good enough for him, who has nothing to do except 'Suppose, suppose and suppose.'

Ministers and prime ministers, however, have important and sensitive cabinet papers in their possession which they are entitled to read in Parliament without anybody spying on them.

Keeping purse closed

Now that the press has shown a predilection for so doing, the Prime Minister no doubt will be concealing her papers and keeping her handbag closed at all times. This would certainly be safer it seems, than entrusting them to a bank.

She is on record with the president of the PAJ that they can examine her bank account at any time. This is rather big I think, of someone who must now make sure that the clasps of her handbag are firmly fastened at all times.

This is not a bad lesson for her to learn so early in the game. But it hardly reflects well on Jamaican media.