Foolish attack on Newsday

WE WOULD have expected that Commissioner of Police Trevor Paul would have his hands full in dealing not only with the crime crisis in the country but also with the serious problems existing in the Police Service itself. But it now appears that this is not the case, that in fact the CoP is so idle that he can find the time and the misguided intent to go on morning television and lambaste Newsday for its exclusive report on Tuesday of the Rowley-Sharma affair.

In a display of self-righteous indignation, Paul declared that in all his years as a policeman he had never seen such a “breach of privilege” as our photocopy publication of information from the Central Police Station diary which showed that the UNC Fyzabad MP had actually given two statements of his confrontation with Dr Rowley to the police. What is just as amazing is that Paul was supported in his attack on Newsday by some pseudo-journalists in the broadcast media whose appreciation of the dynamics of our profession is so infantile that they cannot understand or accept the responsibility of a newspaper to get at the truth, no matter how confidential or privileged it may be.

One guiding maxim of journalism is that the truth will set us all free. And this newspaper, although not infallible, is irrevocably committed to seeking the truth and presenting it to our readers without embellishment. Indeed, the most important factor needed to resolve the ugly controversy arising from the “confrontation” between Rowley and Sharma in the Parliament tea room last week is the truth and nothing but the truth. Both the Minister and the Opposition member have given conflicting accounts of what transpired between them. Who is telling the truth? Surely, in such circumstances, it must be the duty of the media to unearth all the facts relating to this episode and publish them for the benefit of the reading public.

We are sure there are those who, for various reasons, would prefer that the truth about this incident not be exposed since it might well confound their subjective and dearly held assumptions. But we can hardly be deterred by such considerations. We took the deliberate decision to publish photographic excerpts from the station’s diary simply because they presented irrefutable proof of the truth of our reports. Instead of understanding this, Commissioner Paul berates us for committing what he considers a “breach of privilege.” With a lifetime of experience in the Service, how could he have come to such a foolish and uninformed conclusion? What offence did we commit? On what authority is Paul claiming that the contents of a station diary are “privileged?” Does not the CoP recognise the right of the public to know, particularly in such a matter as this?

It may well be that the Commissioner does not share our respect for the truth and right of the people to know, since he has chosen to maintain a steady silence on the decision of the Tobago Police last February to halt the prosecution of the two Barbadians caught fishing in our territorial waters. According to the priorities of the country’s top cop, it is more important for him to publicly condemn Newsday for getting at the truth than to fully investigate this deliberate and illegal interference in the course of justice and to tell the country the truth about it. The fact is, this investigation has gone from Tobago to Port-of-Spain and back more frequently than the ferry service, and the DPP is apparently no more the wiser about the identity of the “high ranking official” who gave the instructions. It is this kind of cover-up, in fact, which forces the media to go to any lengths to discover the facts. With that sort of mindset, we fear that transparency and accountability in the Police Service will be dead letters.