Movin’ on… in journalism

Your Eyewitness gotta be honest…as the Stabber News’s (self-inflicted) death rattle came to its inevitable end – when you gotta go, you gotta go!! – its narcissistic surfeit of plaudits started stuck in his craw!! It appeared nothing else of import – but its disappearance was going on in Guyana!! Your Eyewitness wants to know if – as the Stabber and all its teary-eyed, blubbering correspondents insist – they and the service provided was so vital for our nation, why weren’t they able to keep going?? After all, the foundational assertion of the free enterprise system they claim to represent is if you got a product folks want, they’ll beat a path to your door!!
But no!! Among the reasons proffered for their demise was the $84M owed by the DPI for ads run for the government. To the average Joe and Josephine in the streets this seems to be a valid threat to survival. But think of it… it means is they’ve been getting paid – but just that payments were LATE!! The KN revealed that they and THIS paper were owed even larger sums – but they understood the logistical challenges of the DPI coordinating payments from so many government departments!! But no…rather than pointing to bureaucratic sloth, the Stabber disingenuously dangled that $84M debt every chance they got – or created!!
Then there’s the peans on their “impartiality”!! Your Eyewitness conducted a quick review of all those who took the time mourn the imminent passing – and it was incredible how much of mutual backscratching and self-congratulation the exercise was!! Sadly, in its opening statement on the first – free – edition, Founder-Editor David De Caries declared honestly that there is no such thing as “impartiality” in the press!! As he wrote candidly, “A newspaper represents the interests, outlook (and prejudices) of those who own and control it… By “independent” we do not mean free of any perception of the interests and opinions of its owners. No paper is, or ever will be, so “free”. In a word, it represented the “interests and opinions” of De Caries and the close coterie of the Coloured elite around him.
As such let us remember that the Stabber was launched with a US$100,000 grant – at a time when US greenbacks were so scarce, you couldn’t even buy Condensed Milk, unless you were Burnham!! – from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which had been formed three years earlier by the Reagan administration to assist in the fight against communism. Quite candidly, the NED funded activities – with a gentler face – that had previously been performed by the CIA.
That Colored Elite had just rejected Jagan and demanded an African Presidential Candidate.
Jagan countered with “Luncheon” but the rejection was “Black…but too red”!!

…from Maduro’s jingoism
And imagine we used to complain that nobody in the world knew who we were – save being the place where Jim Jones torpedoed Kool Aid’s reputation!! But after Exxon struck those 11 billion barrels (and counting) of sweet, light, crude – suddenly we’re on everyone’s radar!! Only to discover being well known ain’t necessarily such a good thing as we might’ve thought it was!!
For one, since Mad Maduro was infected by the “we wuz robbed by perfidious Albion” like his predecessors, the oil made the ex-bus driver lose whatever marbles he had left when Chavez croaked and he became President. How dare these natives of the effete British Empire – who’d been just slaves and indentured servants – now be in a position to leapfrog the heirs to the Spanish Empire that once spanned continents!!?
One of our problems is that because we haven’t been mixing much with our South American neighbours, we don’t realize how low they think of us.
And let’s remember that Delcy’s the same!!

…hassle-free shopping?
Your Eyewitness notices signs that the M&CC in GT are finally making moves to remove the vendors – who turn shopping into running a hurdles course! – from our Capital’s pavements,
At last they’ve acquired a pair?