Dear Editor,
“Tis all a Chequer-board of nights and days
Where Destiny with men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the closet lays.”
― Omar Khayyam
Once more… begging your indulgence—brief space this time, to tell a story related to my obsessive concern about the current state and role of the fourth estate in Guyana, especially the media propaganda games taking place in this prelude to Guyana’s forthcoming elections on September 1, 2025.
One morning about three years ago, a beaming young woman journalist accompanied by her cameraman approached me in the Kitty post office— for a comment. The PPP government had just issued one of those old-age pensioners pay-rises, the usual chump change pittance reflecting their total lack of empathy and patent disrespect for senior citizens that they always make a lot of fuss about in the annual budget report.
She was collecting views on that particular US$17.50 (seventeen dollars and fifty cents) increase on the monthly US$1.40 old-age pension… currently at the princely sum of US$200 per month. Imagine that. In oil-rich Guyana? Looking directly at that young reporter I responded, “Do you really want to know.…” But obviously, she did not read in my eyes what she hoped to hear; so she was hurrying away before I could say another word, rejecting my shouted promise,“Wait, don’t you want to hear …? She was literally running away from me, firmly insisting: “Noo-noo NOO! — Doon-worii doon-worii doon-WORII!”
She did not tell me which news outlet she represented, but could guess. My regret is that she did not slow down to answer for me (and herself) one of the ,“Five Ws” fundamental questions—Who, What, When, Where, Why—any journalist worth her (or his) salt should ask themselves.
I wanted to ask her WHY? Why little sister, don’t you want to hear the naked truth? Why ask questions if you’re forbidden to report in your newspaper, the facts of the response you receive?
Yours truly,
Joan Cambridge-Mayfield
Former Guyana Press Corps Member
