Anil takes another dig at the Guardian

Anil Roberts spoke about accountability on Monday night in an off the cuff speech at a political meeting of the United National Congress (UNC) and challenged all citizens and the media to be accountable for the development of the country.

The Sports Minister and MP for D'Abadie/ O'Meara referred to the inauguration speech of President Carmona one week ago in which the new president said being responsible and accountable does not only apply to only persons in high places. 

The president stated: "One cannot justly demand that those in authority be disciplined, responsible, accountable, and not invoke the same standards in our daily lives."

Roberts used that to go back to his complaints about the Guardian media, its editor-in-chief Judy Raymond and reporter Anika Gumbs Sandiford. Last week Roberts said he had served them with legal documents claiming defamation for articles published by the paper.

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When he first complained about the Guardian, Roberts said the story about him being the subject of an investigation by the DPP was wrong and provided the evidence in the form of a letter denying that any such probe was taking place.

At the time he also complained that the reporter had fabricated a quote from him. Roberts said the Guardian compounded its "lies" by publishing a story stating that he had in fact given an interview to Said Mohammed at the paper.

The minister produced a letter, which he said was from Mohammed. 

According to Roberts Mohammed stated categorically that he did interview Roberts but only on the issue of a story about a robbery at the home of Opposition MP Colm Imbert. Roberts said Mohammed stated that he had "no other communication with the minister on or off the record".

Roberts said there has been a pattern of irresponsible and biased reporting from some members of the media. 

He cited the case of a front page story about the PM's purchase of a Range Rover vehicle with nothing in the article to suggest that anything was out of the ordinary but failed to say a word about the BMW X6 vehicle owned by Opposition leader Keith Rowley.