OSWALD BROWN WRITES
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As I noted in a previous column, I again think it is a national disgrace that the major daily newspapers in The Bahamas seem to be so totally fixated on crime and political malfeasance that major news of extreme importance involving The Bahamas is not reported. Unquestionably, this is the case with regard to a story published in the Jamaica Observer on Sunday, May 27, revealing that the Royal Bahamas Defence Force will be hosting the largest military training exercise of its kind June 14 – 21.
According to The Observer, Tradewinds 2018 is an annual regional military training exercise that this year “will focus on countering transnational organised crime in the region.” Declaring that the main objective of the military event is to foster training for security forces that is tailored for the region by the region, The Observer article added: “The annual exercise is sponsored by the United States Southern Command. This year’s Tradewinds will consist of 22 partner nations from the Caribbean region, the wider Americas and Western Europe. Additionally, the exercise will consist of over 400 troops from various Caribbean nations that are expected to put their military training to test.”
As I previously announced, one of the main objectives of BAHAMAS CHRONICLE, the online news publication recently launched by THE BROWN AGENCY, is to keep Bahamians and natives from other CARICOM countries in the world-wide Diaspora up-to-date on news from their respective countries, so we daily research the online editions of the various newpapers in CARICOM-member countries to compile the reports from around the region that we publish in BAHAMAS CHRONICLE.
I was totally shocked when I read the story in the Sunday edition of the Jamaica Observer about the immensely important “military training exercise” being coordinated by The Bahamas and realized that I had not seen any report on this major news story in either the Nassau Guardian or The Tribune, the two preeminent national newspapers published in Nassau.
How is it possible that news of such importance involving The Bahamas apparently was missed by both national publications?
A similar egregious dereliction of responsibility by the two most foundational pillars of The Fourth Estate in The Bahamas occurred just a couple weeks ago when both newspapers – as well as the poorly managed government news agency, Bahamas Information Services (BIS) – failed to provide proper coverage for the two-day meeting of Foreign Ministers of CARICOM-member countries hosted by The Bahamas Ministry of Foreign Affairs May 7-8.
As I mentioned in a previous column on that shameful non-performance by The Tribune and The Guardian, it was “a total disgrace that the two major dailies in this country both decided to ignore the fact that the 15 Foreign Ministers of CARICOM were meeting in Nassau.” What made that lack of coverage “of this important meeting even more disgraceful is the fact that I did not see a substantive PRESS RELEASE on the meeting prepared by Bahamas Information Services (BIS), which is supposed to be the government’s news agency.”
The same is true about the apparent “blackout” of news coverage by major news agencies in The Bahamas for the upcoming military training exercise in The Bahamas.
As a career journalist for more than 56 years, I have been Editor of both the Nassau Guardian and the Freeport News, at different times, and I received my early training in journalism in the early 1960s during my five years on the staff of The Tribune, under the tutelage of two of the most renowned journalists in the history of The Bahamas: Arthur A. Foulkes, the then News Editor, and Sir Etienne Dupuch, The Tribune’s late Publisher and Editor.
So my chagrin in seeing how those responsible for deciding what daily is considered to be the “most important” news events is heightened by the fact that crime, scandals and political wrongdoings – the “stock and trade” of the Tabloid newspaper genre – get precedence over news items that “responsible” decision-makers in most newsrooms would be quick to recognize as really important news.
Since the launch of THE BROWN AGENCY’s online news publication BAHAMAS CHRONICLE, I am enjoying the excitement of deciding what news stories are important and what are not. Of course, we do not publish crime news – at least with regard to the daily carnage that the media in The Bahamas take delight is publishing, and in the process negatively impacting tourism, our major economic lifeline – because we do not consider crime to be news.
We must be doing something right because we have already attracted a very good following not only among our targeted clientele in the Diaspora, but also in The Bahamas and several other CARICOM-member countries. But as we state in our promotional pieces, advertising is the lifeblood of news media and we certainly would like to encourage advertisers to take advantage of our very reasonable advertising rates, details of which can be obtained by contacting us at otbrown242@gmail.com.
