Journalists, or PENs For Hire ...

I looked with some interest at the headline of today’s Trinidad Guardian, which indicated that there is a mass exodus of media ‘personalities, a.k.a. journalists, all of whom seem to be heading blithely into Governmental service.

Interesting …

Whatever happened to being paragons of virtue and the ‘voice of the people’? what happened to the need to investigate the wrongs and bad habits of the government and all concerned with them – be they contracts, persons of interest, hidden agendas?

Is it that these things are only important when certain people are the targets?

Interesting …

So … apparently now that ‘everything is right with the world’ we have a huge chunk of the media moving in to governmental service … what a bleepin joke!

It is now blatantly obvious that anyone can be bought for a good enough price, even members of the 5th estate.

Case in point: I have been watching with avid interest, along with some of my fellow observers, the interesting goings on and behavior of two PROMINENT members of the current Cabinet. It would seem that some people cannot walk without having their hands held, and others cannot walk without having hands to hold. Be it at the airport, the parliament, public meetings, from one car to the next … these two act like kindergarten buddies. Seeing as how the photographs have been appearing in every single daily and weekend newspaper produced in Trinidad and Tobago, I find it rather strange that nothing has been written about this situation. However, had this been the former Prime Minister’s wife and another member of the former Cabinet, there would have been such a furor brought to life that it would have been heard all the way in North America.

Why the double standard fellas? Where are those investigative minds that you’re all so proud of – the same ones who for the past few years have been reporting blindly and then printing tiny page 1 and 2 apologies for slanderous comments?

Have you now learnt the error of your ways? Or is it that this regime pays better? Inquiring minds want to know.

Has it occurred to any of you ship jumping jokers that you’re following the scent of a dangling carrot in order to keep you silent? Are you aware that you have joined the ranks of the government propaganda machine – the same machine that you raged against, a short few months ago? It just strikes me as passing strange that you’re all willing to become the right hand men and women of this crop of ‘stooges’ but you weren’t willing to do the same for those who went before.

Tell me … how are you going to spend your thirty pieces of silver – the ones who gained when you sold your collective souls and sold out the people who look to you for opinions and advice. Is it that we are all going t have to stay tuned for the Department of Information weekend programming to know what’s going on in sweet T&T?

Dare God I hope not.

To say that I am disappointed is a major understatement. To say that I’m surprised would be a lie.

Tread lightly gents, and know that the people that you will ignore on the way ‘up’ are attached to the same asses that you will have to kiss on the way back down!