ROUND UP....SAME OLD SAME OLD

Well we have been watching and it's sad to say that some things just never change.

We'll start with Natalie Briggs of C News.
Miss Briggs, who put a gun to your head and forced you to put your voice to the stories on the man whose home was flooded and the re-opening of the NP gas station on Wrightson Road?
Steups!
You know what you sounded like? You probably said to yourself "Well they told me I have to do it so I am doing it." Totally discourteous to your viewers as you sounded very disinterested, on two consecutive nights. Why should your viewers waste their time to listen to you when it seems you can't be bothered to put some effort into telling them your story?
Get it through your head that you are working in an internally and externally competitive industry! When the viewer switches from your dead-in-the-water-can't-bother-to-put-any-effort -into-this-boring-story, then it's too bad for the person unfortunate enough to have their story come up in the line-up after yours because chances are the viewer will completely miss it because they were caught by a story one of your competitors is showing!
Are you going through some personal tragedy that makes it hard for you to concentrate on work at this time? Then by all means take some time off, regroup, and come back invigorated. Otherwise, snap out of your semi-coma and get to work!
Your producer needs to light some fire under you and vet every voice piece you do from now on because you are just not cutting it!
And to top it off, the audio mix on that NP story was awful.

Your colleague at IETV, Nadine Hackett also needs some voice lessons, as we have advocated for on numerous occasions. She still ends every sentence with a high pitch, which we are still trying to fathom. And she also did the story on the man whose house was flooded, but she told her viewers the house was "swamt" with water. We are guessing she was trying to say swamped.
Steups!

The story with the two young people who drowned at Guanapo was interesting, as again there were different reports on what really happened.
Then we had Mark Bassant of C News on the scene on Sunday night, so his stand up played into his packaged story in Monday's 7pm newscast.
The earring Mark! It's not even a stud, which would have been more conspicuous but still unacceptable. Your earring looked more like a napkin ring stuck to the side of your head, it was just too large and distracting.
Granted if you went on the hike and were caught unawares and you were doing the standup in the heat of the moment we could possibly understand, but we suspect you left your office on Sunday evening and headed to Guanapo when you heard about the tragedy of the missing hikers.
So your cameraman did not think to tell you to remove the earring when you were on camera? Well it was probably the same cameraman who did that interview with the young woman whose breasts were exposed. Mark, news is serious business but you are not treating it as such, neither is your producer.
And it seemed as if your producer had to appease you again on Tuesday with the second story of the 7pm newscast when we had another story from you which was recorded in Guanapo on Sunday evening. Did they feel sorry for you having to stand in the rain on Sunday so they gave you the go-ahead to do a second story from that event?

And for that same story, Samuel McKnight at CNC 3 said "What is even worst...". Hmmm.
Please Mrs Sant, when you return from your vacation, send Samuel for some much-needed rest first then some voice training after. We know we didn't say anything about his voice, but it's still needed.

Then for the story on the young woman who died at Mount Hope after a truck ran into her, there were again different accounts. One report said the offending car slammed into the back of the truck which then hit the young woman. But in that same story, we saw a huge dent on the driver's side of the car and not a scratch in the front.
Another report said the truck driver was trying to overtake the taxi, then crashed into the taxi and hit the young woman.

And of the same story, the Guardian's Geisha Kowlessar wrote on Thursday that "The five young women were standing on the Eastern Main Road, mere metres from the Mt Hope Worship Tabernacle where they had attended Bible studies only moments ago."
While on Friday, her colleague Michelle Loubon wrote "But Jessop’s flocks were determined to continue labouring in the Lord’s vineyard. Therefore, Bible classes were not aborted."

On Monday, Justin D. and Fazeer Mohammed of First Up on CNMG were trying to get to the bottom of the conflicting newspaper headlines on the PM's speech on Sunday. Did he say he was gunning for an Executive President, yes or no?
Well Fazeer came to the conclusion that it comes down to how the different reporters interpreted the speech. Well Fazeer, we are guessing that their tape recorders were trying to translate Mr Manning's speech from German into English and that's where the confusion over interpretation became an issue.

And on Friday morning, Justin read a story at 6am about the 90th birthday celebrations of Nelson Mandela, and the visuals for the entire story were five black and white photos of the great man.
So, your station which has been around forever, in different shapes and forms, could not cough up one video shot of Mr Mandela? All this week the BBC has been featuring his various pre-birthday celebrations. The person who wrote that story or took it off the wires or the producer couldn't ensure that someone just stuck a tape in a machine and record one minute of video of Mr Mandela?
Steups!

And finally, how could we forget the Grenada elections?
The most we can remember about it was that callers to one radio station in particular were not at all pleased with the coverage from regional journalist Peter Richards.
Peter, they said you were biased in your reporting and did not reflect what was actually happening on the ground among the voters. They said you were predicting a win for Keith Mitchell's party, when all along the pre-election polls were pointing to a resounding victory for Tillman Thomas' party.
Well Peter if you've learned one thing, it's to not call the result until the last vote is counted.

And lest you think it's just bad news, we want to say kudos to Charlene Ramdhanie, Desha Rambhajan and Samantha John for looking so spiffy in the last couple of weeks.
Charlene really has come a long way, and Samantha has a new haircut that suits her features.
But Samantha we can't understand why your boss has chosen to change the format of your newscast again. Now we have you on the set at the start of the newscast by yourself, then Joel only comes in for the sport. What's up with that?
And Astil at CNC 3, on Thursday night at the start of the newscast you were the same height as Shelly and Odeka, but when they were introducing you for the sportscast, you seemed to tower over them.
Your director needs to set the height of your chair and stick with it.