The Manicou Report

The evening news is pissing me off again. First it was CNC3 who ran a story about the ANSA McAl book and neglected to mention that CNC3 was owned by ANSA McAL, now it’s the C evening news.

Saturday night I’m watching the C evening news and the news presenter Nicola Barriteau is reading a story about a Friday night UNC meeting in San Juan. She introduces the story by mentioning that the UNC Alliance has a new member who made her first speech on the San Juan platform blah, blah blah. Then Ms Barriteau reads that the new member took to task former Prime Ministers A.N.R. Robinson and Patrick Manning who she said let down the country. Then Ms. Barriteau read “it’s interesting to note that she did not name Basdeo Panday as one of the Prime Ministers who let down the country”. Where dat come from?

The last time I remember being this disappointed was back in 1994 when then TV6 anchor Francesca Hawkins was reading a story concerning the O.J. Simpson verdict. A news reporter had done a man-in-the-street type story asking people for their reactions to the verdict. Of course some people were disappointed with it while some were esctatic. The last woman the reporter interviewed was standing by the People’s Mall and when the reporter told her that O.J. had been found not guilty she proceeded to dance, strut and shout with joy at the news. When the story is over and the camera is back on Francesca she wraps it up by saying sarcastically “sympathetic reactions there from the people in Port of Spain today” (or something to that exact effect). Here am I thinking what is wrong with this woman? We get it. You think O.J. is guilty, but spare us your insight. Most rational people believe that O.J. was guilty and if that woman by the People’s Mall wants to also believe that then hooray for her. But Francesca’s views had nothing to do with the newscast. Why did people have to be sympathetic? Now every time I see her face I remember that one incident.

While the Francesca remark was bad because she allowed herself to get caught up in the moment, this incident on the C evening News was a hundred times worse because it was scripted. Some idiot wrote it, another idiot vetted it and then Ms. Barriteau read it.

The fact that Basdeo Panday’s name was not called is irrelevant. The only news worth reporting is that the speaker named A.N.R. Robinson and Patrick Manning were named as Prime Ministers who had let down Trinidad and Tobago. If the speaker didn’t name Bas, then let the listeners discover and debate the exclusion for themselves. We don’t need the evening news to take on the role of bacchanalist on our behalf. Someone at C is writing the evening news as if it were an opinion column. What kind of crappy reporting is that?

Is it any wonder now that CNMG used to be called PNMG?

What has happened to my 7pm news? It used to be so pure (or at least I was too young to know what impure news was) and now it is tainted by both large corporations and now crappy reporting.