An observant reader has sent us a link to a story about the global problem of newspaper houses worldwide which are also feeling the effects of the global financial meltdown. Trinidad and Tobago is no exception, as we have seen recently with CL Financial and its interests in One Caribbean Media: The Express, The Nation, TV6 and the Grenada Broadcasting Network.
There are some lessons too for broadcast media houses which have websites. Take a look.
Friday, February 27, 2009
HOW DO YOU SAY....??? 3
Here's a response for Mike.
"@ Mike,
You're right, Zakaria is with Newsweek. That's why one shouldn't write, then click send when one is vex...:)"
"NN"
"@ Mike,
You're right, Zakaria is with Newsweek. That's why one shouldn't write, then click send when one is vex...:)"
"NN"
Sunday, February 22, 2009
CARNIVAL TIME
It's Carnival time again and while you may be jumping and waving and having a generally good time, remember to send us your comments on the local media coverage of Carnival activities, such as Dimanche Gras, J'Ouvert, and the Parade of the Bands.
If you catch any international coverage, let us know as well. d.martine6@gmail.com
If you catch any international coverage, let us know as well. d.martine6@gmail.com
WHO DIED?
All the Sunday dailies carry the story of the three men who died in the crash along the Eastern Main Road in Wallerfield. The Newsday's Ralph Banwarie tells us: "Dead are Kareem Romain, 26, of Bel Bird Avenue, Arima, Cliff Croffon, 24, of Bois Bande North Eastern Settlement, Ojoe Road, Sangre Grande and 28-year-old Randell Boyce."
The Guardian's Peter Balroop tells us: "Dead are Chris Dauphin, 24, and Randell Boyce, 28, both of Ojoe Road, Sangre Grande, as well as Kareen Romain, 36, of Bell Bird Avenue, Malabar, Arima."
While Driselle Ramjohn of the Express tells us: "Police reports state that around 5.30 a.m., driver Cliff Dauphin along with Kareem Romain and Randall Boyce were heading west along the Eastern Main Road when Dauphin lost control of his Nissan Frontier and crashed into a tree.
Dauphin, 54, of Ojoe Road, Sangre Grande; Romain, 26, of Malabar and Boyce, 28, also of Ojoe Road, died on the scene."
Well according to the three reports, a total of seven persons died: Randell Boyce, Randall Boyce, 26 year old Kareem Romain, 36 year old Kareen Romain, Cliff Dauphin, Chris Dauphin and Cliff Croffon, while two persons were driving the death van at the time of the accident: Chris Dauphin and Cliff Croffon. Well no wonder there was an accident!
It's strange that all the stories quote from police reports, and they all say that Sgt. Robain is continuing investigations, yet the information on the victims differs so radically. Did all the reporters speak with Sgt. Robain? Steups!
More reason why town say you shouldn't believe everything you read in the newspapers.
The Guardian's Peter Balroop tells us: "Dead are Chris Dauphin, 24, and Randell Boyce, 28, both of Ojoe Road, Sangre Grande, as well as Kareen Romain, 36, of Bell Bird Avenue, Malabar, Arima."
While Driselle Ramjohn of the Express tells us: "Police reports state that around 5.30 a.m., driver Cliff Dauphin along with Kareem Romain and Randall Boyce were heading west along the Eastern Main Road when Dauphin lost control of his Nissan Frontier and crashed into a tree.
Dauphin, 54, of Ojoe Road, Sangre Grande; Romain, 26, of Malabar and Boyce, 28, also of Ojoe Road, died on the scene."
Well according to the three reports, a total of seven persons died: Randell Boyce, Randall Boyce, 26 year old Kareem Romain, 36 year old Kareen Romain, Cliff Dauphin, Chris Dauphin and Cliff Croffon, while two persons were driving the death van at the time of the accident: Chris Dauphin and Cliff Croffon. Well no wonder there was an accident!
It's strange that all the stories quote from police reports, and they all say that Sgt. Robain is continuing investigations, yet the information on the victims differs so radically. Did all the reporters speak with Sgt. Robain? Steups!
More reason why town say you shouldn't believe everything you read in the newspapers.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
HOW DO YOU SAY....??? 2
Here's a response to that comment on Fareed Zakaria.
"Wow, that's amazing that someone would mispronounce such a prominent journalist's name.
"NN seems to have mixed up her magazines, though. Zakaria is the editor of Newsweek International, not Time. Are you sure you've read Zakaria before, NN? Just joking...Point taken."
"Mike"
"Wow, that's amazing that someone would mispronounce such a prominent journalist's name.
"NN seems to have mixed up her magazines, though. Zakaria is the editor of Newsweek International, not Time. Are you sure you've read Zakaria before, NN? Just joking...Point taken."
"Mike"
HOW DO YOU SAY....???
Here's one for CNC3 & C News.
"I listened in horror to a promo on CNC3 about a CNN programme hosted by Fareed Zarakia. The announcer pronounced the man's name Zah-kah-REE-ah, when it should be Zah-KAH-ree-ah. I shudder to think that the announcer is a member of the news team. Hasn't she ever seen the programme? Does she know who the man is? Has she ever read Time magazine?
Steupsss....if you think his show is important enough to be imported onto your station, at least pronounce de man name right nah CNC3!...steupsss.
"I have a long list of woes following C's broadcast of the Groovy & Soca Monarch show last night/this morning. Apparently the show organisers and C weren't on the same page. Everything from the camera work to the couches the celebrity panel sat on were horrible. I plan to itemize every detail and post on your blog and elsewhere. Steupsss x2..."
"NN"
"I listened in horror to a promo on CNC3 about a CNN programme hosted by Fareed Zarakia. The announcer pronounced the man's name Zah-kah-REE-ah, when it should be Zah-KAH-ree-ah. I shudder to think that the announcer is a member of the news team. Hasn't she ever seen the programme? Does she know who the man is? Has she ever read Time magazine?
Steupsss....if you think his show is important enough to be imported onto your station, at least pronounce de man name right nah CNC3!...steupsss.
"I have a long list of woes following C's broadcast of the Groovy & Soca Monarch show last night/this morning. Apparently the show organisers and C weren't on the same page. Everything from the camera work to the couches the celebrity panel sat on were horrible. I plan to itemize every detail and post on your blog and elsewhere. Steupsss x2..."
"NN"
SHE NAMED THE SUSPECT!
This one speaks to a lack of understanding of basic journalism principles.
"Did I just hear right? Did TV6 reporter Elizabeth Williams-Allard say the name of the suspect held in connection with the murder of the German national?
Yes she did ...why? It was during the interview with Andy Johnson on Morning Edition, Andy asked what can you tell us about the suspect and Ms Williams-Allard proceeded to tell us the man's name, the business establishments he holds in Tobago and even the suspect's wife's name.
"Why oh why, does she not know this is a no no?....Ms Williams-Allard come on, you have covered court in Tobago, do you name a suspect before he/she has been charged? Steups."
"LS"
"Did I just hear right? Did TV6 reporter Elizabeth Williams-Allard say the name of the suspect held in connection with the murder of the German national?
Yes she did ...why? It was during the interview with Andy Johnson on Morning Edition, Andy asked what can you tell us about the suspect and Ms Williams-Allard proceeded to tell us the man's name, the business establishments he holds in Tobago and even the suspect's wife's name.
"Why oh why, does she not know this is a no no?....Ms Williams-Allard come on, you have covered court in Tobago, do you name a suspect before he/she has been charged? Steups."
"LS"
Saturday, February 14, 2009
ABDUCTED = ?
The Newsday's Rhondor Dowlat has a story in the Friday edition on the disappearance of two little girls between Tuesday and Wednesday.
"ANTI-KIDNAPPING Squad (AKS) police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the abduction of two schoolgirls, aged seven and eight, in unrelated incidents between Tuesday and Wednesday."
Yet the story's headline reads: "Schoolgirls feared kidnapped".
This is for the person who came up with the headline but who clearly did not read the story first; to abduct means 'to carry off by force; kidnap'. What do the young people say when you say or write something that's obvious? 'Duh!'
"ANTI-KIDNAPPING Squad (AKS) police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the abduction of two schoolgirls, aged seven and eight, in unrelated incidents between Tuesday and Wednesday."
Yet the story's headline reads: "Schoolgirls feared kidnapped".
This is for the person who came up with the headline but who clearly did not read the story first; to abduct means 'to carry off by force; kidnap'. What do the young people say when you say or write something that's obvious? 'Duh!'
Thursday, February 12, 2009
IGNORANCE IS BLISS
This reader has some comments on football and chutney, a potent mix.
"Can someone tell me what this Ray Davis character is doing masquerading as a sports reporter on 102FM? During a five minute sports report you get as much as one minute of actual news. The rest is irrelevant, illiterate fluff and padding. Looks like he feels he is clever. Come on Ray, give us the score. We don't want to know about who win Panorama. Somebody needs to give him lessons about writing news too. Ignorance is real bliss yes.
"The other one is the girl from C who hosted the Chutney Soca show. Not Nicola Barriteau (nice bosom), the other one. A pretty chick. Regarding the interviews. How Ramesh Maharaj and Jack Warner come in that? What they know about chutney? Then when you do that people will come and ask why you didn't go and look for Christine Kangaloo or Jerry Narace in the crowd.
"Come on girl. Judgement. Judgement."
"King Arthur"
Can we add our two cents' worth? That guy who did the half time show during the T&T/El Salvador match on Wednesday night added nothing to the overall programme (yeah, the one in the B Mobile t-shirt). OK, so he wanted to get a feel of how limin' Trinis reacted to the game. First of all your producers picked the wrong venue (Trotters) because the crowd was small and tame. Why not Smokey and Bunty's? Second, he sounded as if he was sampling a few things other than the barbeque wings. Third, that's probably why he was having difficulty forming his words. He was shouting and just being overly obnoxious.
And none of the interviews were noteworthy. No, not even the one with Express reporter Lasana Liburd, who also had difficulty with his speech. We thought since your hey dey in tv interviews back in '06 based on your spat with Jack Warner that you would have been a pro at the one on one interviews by now. Oh well. You have lots of time to practice for South Africa.
"Can someone tell me what this Ray Davis character is doing masquerading as a sports reporter on 102FM? During a five minute sports report you get as much as one minute of actual news. The rest is irrelevant, illiterate fluff and padding. Looks like he feels he is clever. Come on Ray, give us the score. We don't want to know about who win Panorama. Somebody needs to give him lessons about writing news too. Ignorance is real bliss yes.
"The other one is the girl from C who hosted the Chutney Soca show. Not Nicola Barriteau (nice bosom), the other one. A pretty chick. Regarding the interviews. How Ramesh Maharaj and Jack Warner come in that? What they know about chutney? Then when you do that people will come and ask why you didn't go and look for Christine Kangaloo or Jerry Narace in the crowd.
"Come on girl. Judgement. Judgement."
"King Arthur"
Can we add our two cents' worth? That guy who did the half time show during the T&T/El Salvador match on Wednesday night added nothing to the overall programme (yeah, the one in the B Mobile t-shirt). OK, so he wanted to get a feel of how limin' Trinis reacted to the game. First of all your producers picked the wrong venue (Trotters) because the crowd was small and tame. Why not Smokey and Bunty's? Second, he sounded as if he was sampling a few things other than the barbeque wings. Third, that's probably why he was having difficulty forming his words. He was shouting and just being overly obnoxious.
And none of the interviews were noteworthy. No, not even the one with Express reporter Lasana Liburd, who also had difficulty with his speech. We thought since your hey dey in tv interviews back in '06 based on your spat with Jack Warner that you would have been a pro at the one on one interviews by now. Oh well. You have lots of time to practice for South Africa.
NEW GRAPHICS
Here's some good news for TV6.
"Kudos to the TV6 News on the implementation of a tickertape and CNN style graphics. Continue to raise the standards. (But) Please don't tell me that you hired some of CNC3's staff who had that same (spelling) problem some months aback."
"DR"
Denzil, we can't quite agree with you on the graphics. They are small and green, much like a leprechaun. Or green and red, like Santa's elves. You almost need a magnifying glass to see what's on the screen, and that's unfortunate. What about the visually impaired?
"Kudos to the TV6 News on the implementation of a tickertape and CNN style graphics. Continue to raise the standards. (But) Please don't tell me that you hired some of CNC3's staff who had that same (spelling) problem some months aback."
"DR"
Denzil, we can't quite agree with you on the graphics. They are small and green, much like a leprechaun. Or green and red, like Santa's elves. You almost need a magnifying glass to see what's on the screen, and that's unfortunate. What about the visually impaired?
WHEN YUH NEIGHBOUR HOUSE ON FIRE...
Here's an interesting story on the Clico situation which was printed in the Jamaica Gleaner on February 1st and brought to our attention by one of our readers.
Guardian Holdings Chairman Arthur Lok Jack said it was important that no one tries to bury the nail in the coffin.
"Even Guardian Holdings...was swift to react, saying it was profitable and strong, had no liquidity problems and anticipated no bounce-back from Friday's development. 'There is no connection with CLICO whatsoever of any kind with the Guardian companies,' Chairman Arthur Lok Jack told Sunday Business."
But we all know the old saying....
Guardian Holdings Chairman Arthur Lok Jack said it was important that no one tries to bury the nail in the coffin.
"Even Guardian Holdings...was swift to react, saying it was profitable and strong, had no liquidity problems and anticipated no bounce-back from Friday's development. 'There is no connection with CLICO whatsoever of any kind with the Guardian companies,' Chairman Arthur Lok Jack told Sunday Business."
But we all know the old saying....
REWIND
It's been a while, but we can't move forward without taking a look back at one of the biggest financial stories in the country's history. If we need to spell it out at this point, then you have been living under a rock.
When the news first broke on the morning of Friday January 30th that the Finance Minister, the Central Bank Governor and that most elusive and reclusive of businessmen, Lawrence Duprey were holding a joint news conference, we heard alarm bells: dingdingdingdingding!!!!!
But alas, not so in the close to 50 media houses across the country. Why didn't EVERYONE go live, considering that probably 70% of the population has some dealings with Clico whether through the banks or insurance???????????
Steups!
Kudos to I95 for bringing us the entire news conference and the Q&A live. C News got in on the act as well, and we understand the Express was updating its website as the news conference progressed. TV6, considering you are (or up to that point were) 20% owned by Mr Duprey through OCM, it was really surprising that you did not go live. Most news producers showed their poor news judgement. Tsk tsk. Ticker tapes afterward just didn't cut it.
TV6 though was luckily redeemed by Andy Johnson's live programme that night, an ongoing discussion on the country's pending financial crisis, which could not have scripted a better topic than the collapse of one of the region's most successful conglomerates.
Two of the very best stories on the Clico debacle came from TV6's sister paper, the Express. Curtis Rampersad's story titled "We made a mistake" had perhaps one of the most concise descriptions of the entire situation, and this was also commented on by someone who is not even in the media: "It took decades for businessman Lawrence Duprey to build an empire that controlled more than $100 billion in assets spread across the globe. It took just a week for it to start crumbling."
His colleague Ria Taitt meanwhile encapsulated the effect of the global financial issue as it relates to Clico in her story which was based on statements by the Finance Minister.
A couple days later, Monday evening to be exact, TV6's news producers allowed Sasha Mohammed to run roughshod over viewers by letting her do three packaged stories at the top of the newscast from the parliamentary debate on the Central Bank Amendment Bill and the Insurance Amendment Bill. Not even CNN would allow Christiane Amanpour to package three stories back to back.
So everyone else in the newsroom took an unscheduled holiday? Why wasn't anyone else given the opportunity to look at the different stories coming out of the debate? This begs the question then of how adequately Miss Mohammed would have covered those stories since the debate lasted several hours. Maybe she could teach Ria, Juhel and Gail a thing or two?
As you may have guessed, we are partial to the style of musing on current issues by the Guardian's Lenny Grant, so we'll take you to his commentary on the disintegration of Mr Duprey's Colonial dream: "As if it were a corporate mug shot, the beefy image of Lawrence Duprey, a name usually prefaced with “billionaire,” became a poster, to which a “Wanted” sign was understood to apply. On January 30, it was the image of a man in the moral equivalent of custody. Exhausted from a fugitive tramp through the financial badlands, he had given himself up...The Caribbean’s most colourful captain of industry had sailed his flagship, Colonial Life Insurance Company, and other vessels under the flag, into a government safe harbour, there to be made seaworthy once more."
When the news first broke on the morning of Friday January 30th that the Finance Minister, the Central Bank Governor and that most elusive and reclusive of businessmen, Lawrence Duprey were holding a joint news conference, we heard alarm bells: dingdingdingdingding!!!!!
But alas, not so in the close to 50 media houses across the country. Why didn't EVERYONE go live, considering that probably 70% of the population has some dealings with Clico whether through the banks or insurance???????????
Steups!
Kudos to I95 for bringing us the entire news conference and the Q&A live. C News got in on the act as well, and we understand the Express was updating its website as the news conference progressed. TV6, considering you are (or up to that point were) 20% owned by Mr Duprey through OCM, it was really surprising that you did not go live. Most news producers showed their poor news judgement. Tsk tsk. Ticker tapes afterward just didn't cut it.
TV6 though was luckily redeemed by Andy Johnson's live programme that night, an ongoing discussion on the country's pending financial crisis, which could not have scripted a better topic than the collapse of one of the region's most successful conglomerates.
Two of the very best stories on the Clico debacle came from TV6's sister paper, the Express. Curtis Rampersad's story titled "We made a mistake" had perhaps one of the most concise descriptions of the entire situation, and this was also commented on by someone who is not even in the media: "It took decades for businessman Lawrence Duprey to build an empire that controlled more than $100 billion in assets spread across the globe. It took just a week for it to start crumbling."
His colleague Ria Taitt meanwhile encapsulated the effect of the global financial issue as it relates to Clico in her story which was based on statements by the Finance Minister.
A couple days later, Monday evening to be exact, TV6's news producers allowed Sasha Mohammed to run roughshod over viewers by letting her do three packaged stories at the top of the newscast from the parliamentary debate on the Central Bank Amendment Bill and the Insurance Amendment Bill. Not even CNN would allow Christiane Amanpour to package three stories back to back.
So everyone else in the newsroom took an unscheduled holiday? Why wasn't anyone else given the opportunity to look at the different stories coming out of the debate? This begs the question then of how adequately Miss Mohammed would have covered those stories since the debate lasted several hours. Maybe she could teach Ria, Juhel and Gail a thing or two?
As you may have guessed, we are partial to the style of musing on current issues by the Guardian's Lenny Grant, so we'll take you to his commentary on the disintegration of Mr Duprey's Colonial dream: "As if it were a corporate mug shot, the beefy image of Lawrence Duprey, a name usually prefaced with “billionaire,” became a poster, to which a “Wanted” sign was understood to apply. On January 30, it was the image of a man in the moral equivalent of custody. Exhausted from a fugitive tramp through the financial badlands, he had given himself up...The Caribbean’s most colourful captain of industry had sailed his flagship, Colonial Life Insurance Company, and other vessels under the flag, into a government safe harbour, there to be made seaworthy once more."
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