Media images — 23 BCE to 2003 CE — where is the freedom?

THE EDITOR: It is certainly worthy to note that the manner in which the media has treated the citizens of this country is not entirely dissimilar from that which Roman emperors did to the citizens of that great city.

By hurling one bloodied, butchered body after another into the public’s consciousness, via the crafty lenses of the print and electronic media, the institution of journalism has managed to mimic the entertainment ethos of many a Caesar. Almost every media outlet has been guilty of flashing grotesque images of tragedies of the highest proportion — auto accidents, gang killings, murder-suicides all spread out across the journalistic landscape of this country as if it were a post-modern nihilist’s art exhibition. Well my dear citizen this is not art, and has long transcended the realm of morbidity into the downright macabre! When will we, as informed and educated citizens emancipate ourselves from this journalistic slavery? Or will we allow ourselves to be resigned to the pessimism of those who maintain that this is simply a sign of our times?

Indeed, we are not even permitted the liberty to decide whether we should allow our minds to paint the picture that well-written words can do most effectively. Instead we are subjected to daily doses and pictures of limp bodies amidst some horrible wreckage, or the sharp images on our prime-time televisions screens of pallid heads and torsos of the latest murder victim strewn across the poor soul’s bathroom floor. It is not enough to note the irony of desiring less violent times while still finding ourselves buying these newspapers, or tuning in to the invasive television coverage! A dramatic statement must be made that we, the Trinbagonian public, will no longer be taken for a visceral bunch of plebs. Let us no longer allow those who control our supply of news to continue to insult our intelligence, and assault our senses. Reporting tragedies is a duty that should be accorded the necessary respect, not a mercenary drudge that seeks to eke out every last dollar for the latest ‘kill fix’. This is not 23 BCE and we are not in the Coliseum. It’s 2003 CE and we are in Trinidad — a land that has such a promising future if we only exercise our pride in her more fervently. Voice your distress at this maddening trend before inured to it!

BRENDAN  PHILIP
Westmoorings