WHAT LEADS?

Well, well, Fabian Pierre is expanding his repertoire at TV6 by now reading the 7pm news on the weekend. Not bad.
But Fabian your debut was marred by some fundamental errors of judgement in news gathering. On Friday evening, all the major television AND radio stations led their newscasts with the arrest of UNC A candidate Lennox Smith. On Saturday evening, TV6 was the ONLY station with video of Mr Smith emerging from the police station on Friday night, yet Keisha David's packaged story was buried in the newscast! Miss David, the credits at the end of the newscast show that you were the producer, and you had the opportunity to blow the competition out of the water by using that exclusive video as a lead, because both CNMG and CNC ran the very same story as a copy. Even your sister paper the Express had the Smith story on page 3 on Sunday. Lost opportunity.

Anyway Six led with the PNM political meeting from Friday night with the Prime Minister promising a state of the art highway network. What is so new about that? Yet both CNC 3 AND CNMG led with the Prime Minister's WIFE publicly defending him for the first time (at the same political meeting) on criticisms that he has dictatorial tendencies! We did not hear a word of this from Six.
Then all three stations reported on the UNC political meeting on Friday night. CNC and CNMG's main packages reported that Kamla Persad Bissessar told Christine Kangaloo that she knew a secret constitution existed. Yet TV6's take on the story was that Mrs Persad Bissessar stole the show by promising womens' rights and a whole host of other things if the UNC A wins the election (and it was just two soundbites with a bit of video, again buried in the newscast).

CNC's Sampson Nanton managed to scoop the competition with video of a verbal clash between supporters of the COP and the UNC A in the Chaguanas West constituency. Not a word from CNMG or TV6.

Finally Fabian, when there are technical difficulties you need to keep it professional. For some reason there were problems with the weather on Saturday evening and when your director went to black you were heard giggling loudly. Remember the rule is that your mic is live until you are told otherwise. And what are "showery" conditions?