Colin Steer, Associate Editor - Opinion
Shortly after Carl Wint was assigned news desk responsibilities at The Gleaner some years ago, he sat down with reporters individually asking them what their particular interests were and the beats they might want to cover. I indicated, among other things, religion. He looked at me over his glasses and said nothing. In a subsequent meeting with all reporters he commented rather dryly: "I do not want any pilgrims in the newsroom." I understood him to mean that we should not be naïve and gullible.
After assigning specific beats and reshuffling responsibilities he then told us, that we should so cultivate our sources that we should be able to find people not only at their matrimonial homes, but where they drank and where they fornicated. It was Wint at his cynical best. The passage of time allowed me to see the practicality of his statements.
Journalists tend to be among the most cynical of people. For good reason. Medical doctors who treat the battered wives of the respectable businessman or university lecturer, or who terminate the pregnancies of the daughters of upstanding middle-class parents; psychiatrists who treat junkies and the schizophrenic, lawyers who become affluent defending criminals; and pastors who counsel the emotionally, mentally and spiritually dysfunctional tend to govern their activities by a code that protects the privacy of their clients and the counselled.
Journalist, on the other hand, more often than not, tend to sanitise the public personae of private scoundrels.
Some of the 'nice' personalities are hardly ever shown in their true colours; and politicians who scandalise their colleagues are protected by a code that shields the sources of information etc. So some of the smiling people who sat at the table and ate with P.J. Patterson and Edward Seaga and then say the 'nastiest' of things about them privately are not exposed.
Criminal courts
Veteran journalist Billy Hall once suggested that as part of his/her early training every reporter should be sent to cover the criminal courts, where he/she could observe people with the faces of angels lying like devils, who are exposed under cross-examination.
People, including journalists, may well strive for ideals of personal behaviour but fall short in their humanity, or they may wear masks deliberately to conceal their true selves. But a mirror can also deliver the most unflattering images to those who care to look.
For all the frequent charges of sensationalism, journalists do not, as a general rule, publish everything about anybody. In part we are constrained by the laws of libel and slander and also questions of whether some things are really in the public interest.
All these thoughts come against the background of the furore surrounding the publication last week of a Las May cartoon 'skettelising' the Prime Minister. Quite apart from any concerns about the fairness or accuracy of the cartoon, or matters to do with the respect for the office of the Prime Minister, there were some rather curious reactions from persons who were offended. "It would not have been so bad," they said, "if the Prime Minister was portrayed with the same words - even behaving the same way - just as long as she was better-dressed." Ugh?!!! In other words, the clothes maketh the person.
I wonder how many of last week's offended people rushed to condemn the People's National Party supporters who paraded through Kingston with placards a few years ago, with the depiction of a coffin with the words inscribed 'Seaga pamper baby dead'? When Carla Seaga, who was in an advanced stage of pregnancy, protested, there was some criticism of the demonstrators, but Mrs. Seaga was also dismissed by some of our public commentators as being unnecessarily hysterical. Welcome to Jamrock!
It would seem that some of our respondents have special claims to omnipresence - they are everywhere, all the time and can speak with authority about how people behave and speak on all occasions. Perhaps there are more pilgrims among us than we realise.
