Latest update May 12th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 26, 2012 Editorial
During the past few years, many organisations, particularly business entities, have been blaming their incompetence on the media. When they perform poorly they look for any reason. There was a time when they blamed the crime situation. They argued that the criminals were keeping the shopping crowd away even as other business places were recording good business.
More recently, a representative of the local tourism industry proclaimed that by reporting crime on their front pages, the newspapers were scaring away visitors. And the spokesperson peddled this to a newspaper which repeated the nonsense without even a cursory check.
The newspaper went further. It adopted the nonsense and even sought to attack the editorial staff of one newspaper for reporting crime.
The truth about the tourism industry is that it is not properly marketed. If the Guyanese believe that all they need to do is sit and to talk to local officials in order to promote crime then they have to think again. Small Grenada advertises internationally as do Barbados and Jamaica. Trinidad promotes its carnival by buying space in the international media.
The result is astounding. Crime in Trinidad has far surpassed anything in Guyana and the newspapers make no bones about it. They report every serious crime on their front pages. Just last week, one newspaper, The Express, reported prominently that there were forty murders in the first three weeks.
If the argument by the various sections in Guyana is to hold true, then the carnival in Trinidad should be a bust. This is not the case. Already, hotels and guest houses are fully booked and planes are still landing. Even Guyanese are running to the twin-island republic. For the records, Guyana had four murders for the same period.
Grenada is not known for murders or for violent crime for that matter. The population is no larger than a village in Guyana. However, that country advertises like fury and sees the results.
Barbados has had its share of violent crimes and it did not hide these. Instead of staying away the tourists kept landing. Jamaica known for its violent murders is no different. The year when the police laid siege to a section of Tivoli Gardens in Jamaica, in pursuit of Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, nearly one hundred people died in gunfights. There was a curfew as there was in Trinidad. This did not keep people away.
One must now wonder at the evidence that would suggest that reporting crime in Guyana is the instrument that not only affects business but also scares away people. Amazingly, many people returning to Guyana are targeted by criminals and robbed. A few have been shot and killed. These people have relatives and friends overseas. The reports would be more far reaching than any newspaper front page report.
For the tourists, the fact that the tourist promoters fail to offer proper accommodation, good service and something of interest is the main problem. In any case, most of the people who come to Guyana are returning Guyanese who would either choose to come home or to remain in their adopted country. There are many reasons why these people do not come home and crime reports often do not count among the reasons.
We have also heard that by reporting on the crimes in the country the press has been scaring away investors. The truth is that for the greater part the foreign investors paid attention to the infrastructure, power supply and the quality of the labour. The country has been hard pressed to guarantee a steady power supply until recently. This had an impact on the foreign investor.
The biggest bugbear was the bureaucracy. Guyana became known as one of the hardest places to secure licences. Newspapers could not have been blamed for the many investors who cut their losses and left these shores. The situation reached the stage where the government had to pass legislation to improve the processing of applications.
However, it is fashionable to blame the press for every disappointment, for every disaster and for every shortcoming for which the press may not be responsible.
Listen how to run an oil country
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