On Tuesday, the banner headline in the Trinidad Guardian screamed: "From Ramjack to Kamjack".The Trinidad Express had another take on the Monday's events: "I'm no drunk" and Newsday, the third daily newspaper in Trinidad and Tobago, went with "Kamla bids for total control".
Each paper was reporting on the same event - the political story of the year, the internal election in the fragmented opposition United National Congress.
It was nomination day for the January 24 vote, which is based on a one-member-one-vote system to elect its political leader and members of the national executive.
Each was looking for "the story", which was quite obvious, but since the UNC leader was not giving reporters what they wanted they had to get what they could - even if the truth was a little twisted in order to sell papers.
Take the Guardian, for example.
It was wrong on all counts. First its headline suggested that there was an alliance between two independent factions in the election when there was none.
Both Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Jack Warner had made it clear in several public statements that they were not part of any team (Kamjack).
But the rumour had been around for days. Can it be true? The Guardian made it so without checking with the two people who would be the most important players in such an alliance if it were trued: Warner and Persad-Bissessar.
The paper also reported as fact that there was a Warner team when Warner had stated that he had none and there would be none.
The Chaguanas West MP had to write the editor to set the record straight and he reiterated the point when he spoke at a public meeting Tuesday night.
Read the story: There's no Jack Warner team
Was somebody up to mischief or was it just a combination of irresponsibility and incompetence? Certainly the reporter could have asked the man himself. That's what reporters do - ask questions, ascertain the facts and report them.
But that didn't happen.
The two other papers liked the "RUM" story that had been put on the agenda by UNC leader Basdeo Panday.
He had suggested that Persad-Bissessar, who is challenging him for the leadership of the party, had a drinking problem and was therefore "vulnerable" and unfit to lead.
The former prime minister had descended into gutter politics and nobody seemed to care that he was avoiding serious discussion on why he should be reelected leader.
All day reporters were hounding Persad-Bissessar to react, in effect seeking to change the lady's agenda and shift it to the one set first by Panday and then embraced by the media.
It didn't matter that she had more important issues to discuss. The juicy scandal of a drunk seeking to unseat her leader had greater appeal.
And what about Ramesh L. Maharaj, the other leadership contender. No front page for the former attorney general, although he did get some face time with his comment that the election is a two-man race for the leadership.
And Panday didn't get anywhere the media agenda other that his rum talk.
The day's coverage provided an interesting example of the power of media to influence public opinion and to set the agenda. And the tragedy of it is that the efforts of the leadership candidates to explain why people should elect them to run the country's opposition party became secondary.
Such issues were lost in the gossip. And the poor voter who might have been looking for useful information about the election was left with nothing more that an incorrect story about an alliance that didn't and never existed and an accusation that one candidate might have a drinking problem.
With 11 days to go perhaps we might hear the real story.
We can hope. After all, this is Trinidad and Tobago. And anything is possible.
Jai Parasram - 13 January 2010
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