MATT

They say a week is a long time in politics.  A week ago, I thought the main news item that would've occupied the front-burner would've been the Guardian's reporting of a top government official being fingered in an alleged conspiracy to wilfully pervert the course of public justice in relation to charges against two former People’s National Movement ministers.  Or the criticisms of Hon.

I've frequently had to write the T&T dailies asking for an improvement on their ridiculous record of typographical errors (like the Trinidad Express's reporting of the San Fernando City Corp's new website is sancity.com, when it's actually www.sancity.org).  What I find more dangerous, because the trusting reader may not expect it and may act on it, are the non-typographical errors.  I cite two examples from this past week alone.

Just something that's bugging me after seeing the Trinidad and Tobago tabloid newspaper   'written media' headlines at the express checkout line in Hi-Lo:

600 cases in an estimated population of 1.2 million is 0.05% of the population. If we go with another estimate of Trinidad and Tobago's population, 1.5 million, we come up with 0.04% of the population.

Oh. And 3 people? 0.00025% and 0.0002% of the population dead, respectively.

Edmund Gall has been asking some good questions and making good observations regarding media and social media in Trinidad and Tobago - 'Can The Dinosaurs of T&T Media Accept Change?' and 'Can The Media Do No Wrong?'   are worth reading. I agree with his observations for the most part because his observations are based on facts. And while I didn't have comment for his articles, I do have some things I want to add into the mix.

It's being reported today that our House of Representative's Privileges Committee has recommended that Newsday reporter, Andre Bhagoo, be banned for the remainder of this Parliament's session for being guilty of contempt of Parliament, arising from premature publishing in the Newsday of the activities of a House sub-committee before it reported its findings to Parliament (which contravenes both the Standing Orders and Erskine May Parliamentary Practice).