Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Apr 05, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
The United States Embassy in Guyana has become very touchy these days. Last week this newspaper published an April Fools’ Day prank about the fictional withdrawal of four visas to unnamed top government officials. The embassy immediately sat on its high horse and in typical imperial overreach described the decision to publish the story as irresponsible. It demanded an immediate retraction.
Kaieteur News has since issued an unconditional apology. But it is hard to understand why such a story should peeve the US embassy in Guyana. After all, it was innocuous at the worst. It even contained a clue that it was a hoax when it stated that Kaieteur News had first received information about the visa revocations on February 29, 2015, a date that does not exist.
One therefore has to ask if the United States embassy was upset simply because it was pranked. It should not be because that is the whole purpose of the hoax, to prank persons into believing something that is not true.
April Fools’ Day pranks are not unknown to the media in the United States. This past week, ABC, one of the top broadcasting companies in the United States, recapped some memorable All Fools’ Day media pranks, including one that former President Nixon was once again running for office and another which reported that a well-known Mayor had died. Not everyone will find the latter funny or worthy of a hoax. And according to the ABC report, many people did not.
But it is hard to understand why the United States Embassy took such umbrage at the story about the visa revocations published in the Kaieteur News. Such a story pales when compared to some of the hoaxes that have been carried in mainstream newspapers over the years.
It also pales with some of the satire known to be practiced by western publications. When the offices of a Paris satirical magazine were stormed earlier this year, the United States rightly condemned this terrorist action. The right to satire was defended. But what was strange was that the United States embassy did not find it irresponsible or in poor judgment that a magazine should so offensively satirize the prophet of a major religion in the world. They did not find that in bad taste at all!
Yet they found the publication in Kaieteur News of a parody, on a day notorious for such hoaxes, to be an exercise in poor judgment.
What therefore accounts for this unprecedented decision by the embassy? Just before this April 1 episode, the US Embassy had responded to a statement made by former President Jagdeo at a political rally. The embassy did not see this comment that it made as a case of interfering in a domestic political squabble.
Was it a case that in responding to the Kaieteur News hoax that the embassy was attempting to balance the scales? That having commented against the former President, it needed to even things out by commenting on the story that the visas of four top officials were revoked?
Or was it a case that the Embassy received an official complaint and therefore felt that it had to say something? Did the PPP or the government lodge a formal complaint to the US embassy about the story? I am sure that the US Embassy will not confirm or deny this.
I am sure that if the Kaieteur News had ran a story about a man being born with three legs that it would not have pranked anyone. That would have been too common an April Fools’ offering and one that people would have spotted immediately.
Pranks and hoaxes add a touch of fun and humour to our lives. The news cannot always be about serious things. There is a funny side to life and newspapers often have to reflect that side.
Newspapers do also receive their fair share of prank news. Many a story does not check out and many reporters end up being the laughing stock of those who orchestrate such pranks.
April 1 allows newspapers to have their fun. It allows them the opportunity to prank their readers. This is all the Kaieteur News was attempting to do.
So why did the US embassy react the way it did? The most effective pranks are not those outlandish stories such as the ones about UFOs being spotted or a man being born with three legs. The most effective pranks are those that are close to the truth. This closeness to the truth is what makes the hoaxes believable to large numbers of persons.
I wonder whether it is this aspect that made the US worry. Could it be that the fictional story had some grain of truth in it?
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
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