tfraser@tstt.net.tt

In praise of our own

• We in the profession have not been liberal and honest with praise of our own.
• We should use the experiences and achievements of the most capable and professional of our journalists as models.

This column is about recognition, appreciation and, alas, reality, notwithstanding.

Given that cynicism colours so much of our reporting, examination and reflection, and that we are notoriously harsh with our own, we have absorbed the cynical disposition as part of our nature and so hardly ever recognise, appreciate and celebrate those amongst us who have done extraordinarily well. When we do, it’s restricted to those within our narrow media environment.

Over the years, while organisations such as BWIA, Royal Bank, UWI, bpTT through the Riley man and his staff have honoured many amongst us, we in the profession have not been as liberal and honest with praise of our own.

We certainly have not used the experiences and achievements of the most capable and professional of our journalists as models.

Last week we were reminded of one of our own, John Babb, by the Hilton and Ali Khan, the man, as this column has previously observed, who has come amongst us and consistently recognised achievers in journalism, in culture and indigenous thought and action.

As I sat and listened to John take us through how he did it, my mind doing this reflection thing to make greater sense of what the speaker or writer is saying, the focus was on the social, educational and economic circumstances John attached to his life. Most importantly, I thought too of the element of Mr Babb’s work—“you must always have respect for your elders and betters,” my dear old queen would admonish us at the hint of some marginal disrespect perceived or real—which has been his greatest contribution: his ability to keep his personal views and biases out of his reportage.

Undoubtedly, Mr Babb’s facility with shorthand helped. Many reporters, unable to quickly and accurately make notes or to do the modern thing of recording delivered statements of one kind or the other, invent and impose our biases on the story.

Others set out to interpret what we hear in relation with our own political, ethnic, religious biases. Others amongst us are simply incompetent, intellectually lazy or have not prepared ourselves sufficiently for the task at hand.

John Babb’s work should be held up to the young on how to get it right and how to defeat personal biases and to tame those tribal and other forces that rage within us all.

Fortunately, John is not alone in having made a great contribution to a developing and evolving body and practice of journalism: David Renwick, Jones Madeira, Keith Smith—incidentally, to interpose Lincoln Phillips, who we will go to for the reality check, I heard him tell Keith that when he, Lincoln, lived abroad for long decades, he went to him regularly because in language, idiom, imagery and expression, Keith brought Trinidad alive to him out in the cold.

David’s great strength is how he has been able to develop specialist portfolios and become the outstanding scribe in such areas as commerce and business, parliamentary reporting and now energy. We can learn from David how to spend the time working at details with great care so as to bring understanding to ourselves and so give clarity and direction to our readers, listeners and viewers.

Jones Madeira understands and has worked at the bigger picture of our Caribbean existence with greater energy and purpose than anyone else. He was central to linking the Caribbean via radio and television and print in Cana too.

And there are others of that calibre, but this is not meant to be a comprehensive listing.

Recently, I was walking through a hotel restaurant with a colleague from Barbados when she asked, awestruck: “Isn’t that the illustrious Sir Trevor McDonald?” I was taken aback by her tone and description, testimony that we do not think of our own as highly as we should.

Isn’t Sir Trevor one hell of an achievement we have generally ignored, even been ignorant about? Many are perhaps not aware that Sir Trevor has interviewed with distinction several world leaders, produced quality documentaries and presented BBC and Independent TV newscasts in Britain.

And there are young ones walking the road traversed by the best we have produced. I read Ria Taitt and feel comfortable that she has got the story and that the reportage is credible. I remember Niala Maharaj, her insight and penetration and her willingness to experiment with forms and styles and know that journalism in T&T lost when she migrated. Camini Maharaj has purposed hard and long at expose. And there are others; but there are also others…

It’s a pick-up-side at the Rileys like any that could be found anytime during the parang season. But there was this man singing parang that Papa Goon would have approved of; then he turned to Kitchener and Sparrow and then Samaroo, Adesh; in fact “Rajin” never sounded so appealing.

His name is Albert, he comes from Couva, swears he could out-sing any bhajan singer and is of Chinese and callaloo descent, his description. He sang with a love for the sub-cultures from which the musical forms derive and by demonstration could dismiss those who would drive us into angry and antagonistic enclaves.

I sat in wonderment at the Marionettes Joy to the World concert—I leave the musicality of the show to the musicians. I reflect instead on the social dynamics of the group, of the audience and how they are able to represent and react positively to what we are in the process of becoming; confidently demonstrating that we could interpret music from our heritage continents and cultures in the idiom we continue to create and extrapolate upon.

Nahous, Seecharan, Quammie, Boes; of how Lezama could retain in her genes that cocoa pañol part of us and fuse it with the calypso thing; of Attale in all her Travesãouness (Patois) and with her “nable” string buried solidly in Trini soil.

Boogsie! Oh geesan ages, that man possess oui. I swear he was levitating at times unable to co-exist on the same plane with us as he wandered, fancifully, through his variations on the themes his young accomplice, Chuckaree, was laying down; the pupil demonstrating like Bobby Mohammed and Jit Samaroo and others that Indos in steelband just like everybody else.

I wonder how God in his divine wisdom could give us in this place so much talent, so much creativity, so much ability to party together, even if we not voting together, as Rudder observes, and how we could so waste it on stupidity, racial antagonism instead of allowing our individualness (ethnic and cultural distinctiveness) and douglarality (plurality) to come together.