Hi. The Liming House here. Today I happened to catch the attention of the folk(s) behind @TriniGuardian.  As I’m inclined to do whenever I read one of your pieces, I was engaging in some stream of consciousness invective, as below:

“most ‘Neediest Cases’”? Srsly? RT @TriniGuardian The Fund was organised to identify the ten most “Neediest Cases” in T&T…

Dear @TriniGuardian: you need to hire some bloody editors. http://bit.ly/9IeSJ4

And what is with this ‘Karen’ and ‘Anil’ nonsense? You all used to pitch marble? http://bit.ly/cUES62

Could you also hire people who who can put a sentence together @TriniGuardian? This is appalling http://bit.ly/d1pajB

Other weighed in, via RTs and replies:

seldo @theliminghouse Do not get me (and especially not @eparillon) started on the illiteracy of T&T newspapers. The Express is even worse.

eparillon @theliminghouse @seldo that example doesn’t even seem that bad by Trini news standards, honestly.

eparillon @theliminghouse The one about the PSA guy who embezzled all that money. And I agree on the weeping.

eparillon @theliminghouse I’m not saying it was literate, but I did end the article knowing marginally more than when I started it.

eparillon @theliminghouse That’s a BIG victory by Trini press standards.

To which I responded:

@eparillon which example? There are numerous. Those were selected arbitrarily. In general, I avoiding reading the Trini press. Makes me cry.

@eparillon The piece on the PSA guy was all kinds of terrible, made worse by the fact the reporters involved thought they were oh- so-clever

@seldo Oh, I’ve written about them before. But it’s been a while. Time for a fresh dissection.

By that time, your Twitter folk(s) had clocked on:

TriniGuardian Please know that we appreciate your comments and opinion and we will look into this matter @theliminghouse

Thanks @theliminghouse for the observation, we acknowledge your comment

TriniGuardian @theliminghouse is there anything further you wish us to assist you with at this moment. We do our best to complete our duties…

Of course, there’s history here, something to which I alluded in my responses:

@TriniGuardian Still waiting to hear back from you about previous queries, so I won’t hold my breath.

Further to hiring better editors, teaching reporters how to write and basic fact-checking, see also http://bit.ly/azbfgp @TriniGuardian

As for that history? Let’s go back to September 2009, when I published  dissection of a piece of work written by Richard Lord on alcohol consumption in Trinidad. That post got picked up by Global Voices and various Twitterati, and as with today, the folks behind @TriniGuardian promised to “look into it.”

Never heard back.

But listen, don’t take my outbursts personally.

Actually, scratch that. You should bloody well take this personally. As a rule, the quality of reporting in your newspaper and on your website is abysmal. Your pages are replete with spelling mistakes, typos and grammar that would shock a half-decent primary school student; errors of fact and omission; opinion pieces masquerading as news; pieces without bylines;  stories and photographs ripped from the pages and websites of other publications without attribution.

Have you no professional pride? Do you care not at all about getting things right? Do you pay no heed to the fact that strong, hard-hitting and objective media are essential to the development of a country and its people?

Do any of you even read?

What the hell is going on with media in Trinidad and Tobago? Seriously. Get a grip, guys and gals. Because this is beyond embarrassing.

Back in March 2009, I wrote the following but never posted it:

I blame the journalists. I blame the reporters. I blame the editors, the subeditors and the production desks. I blame the anchors, the sound engineers and the camera operators. I blame the owners and the advertisers. I blame the readers, the viewers, the listeners.

Because Trinidadian media suck.

That about sums it up.

What, exactly, is your excuse for your utter inability to update your sites to reflect this state of affairs, per the following screenshots (taken at approximately 8.55pm Trinidad time):

Screenshot of the Express front page at 8.55pm on Tuesday Jan 12

Screenshot of the Guardian Online's front page at 8.55pm on Tuesday Jan 12

Screenshot of the Newsday's website front page at 8.55pm on Tuesday Jan 12

Poor.

Trinis drink more alcohol than water—Hospedales

In a word, awful. In two words, bloody awful. Any more words and this post will no longer be fit for children.

But as I am of late attempting to be constructive as well as merely scathing, behold the thinking behind my righteous indignation:

T&T is ranked as the 98th among countries with the highest consumption of alcohol.

This is a non-statement. It tells one nothing. Worse, it doesn’t actually make any sense. What are these countries with the highest consumption of alcohol, pray tell? And how many of them are there? Or did the hapless reporter, Richard Lord, mean to say:

Measured in litres of pure alcohol consumed by its citizens in a given year, Trinidad and Tobago ranks 98th globally, Alicia Hospedales, Minister of State in the Social Development Ministry, said during Wednesday’s debate…

Onward:

She said that information was provided by the World health Organisation (WHO).

Did she, Richard Lord? Did she really mean that someone from the WHO handed her a report on the matter? Perhaps. Rather more likely, Ms Hospedales or one of her staff – unlike say, Richard Lord – did a cursory Google search and happened on this handy Wikipedia-provided, WHO-sourced list of countries ranked by alcohol consumption.

Onward:

Hospedales said the Government’s decision to increase taxes on alcohol and tobacco products was a good one as it is intended to act as a deterrent to users of those products. Responding to claims from Opposition MPs Ramesh Maharaj, Dr Roodal Moonilal and Chandresh Sharma that the initiative was not likely to succeed, Hospedales said she begged to differ. She said the measure would be successful.

SIGH. There is no evidence in this story of either fact checking or even the most cursory editing, so I shall provide some:

Hospedales said the Government’s decision to increases taxes on alcohol and on tobacco based products as part of its 2010 budget proposals was intended to act as a deterrent to users of those products. Higher taxes tend to be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices,  which may lead to reduced demand for the more expensive goods.

Hospedales disagreed with Opposition MPs Ramesh Maharaj, Dr Roodal Moonilal and Chandresh Sharma, who claimed the initiative was not likely to succeed.

And again:

The minister said T&T had been ranked among the countries with the highest number of Alcoholics Anonymous groups per capita in the world.

She said from statistics it seemed that citizens of this country were drinking more alcohol than water.

Gobsmackingly awful, but *thinking constructive thoughts*:

The minister said T&T also ranked (is this true? And if so, where? would have to ACTUALLY DO SOME REPORTING) among those countries with the highest number of Alcoholics Anonymous groups per capita.

On that point, there’s only one study floating around on the interwebs as regards “AA groups per capita” – it dates back to 1991 and posits, among other things:

the highest ratio of A.A. groups in 1991 was in Iceland (784 groups/million people), which has among the lowest levels of alcohol consumption in Europe, while the lowest A.A. group ratio in 1991 was in Portugal (.6 groups/million people), which has among the highest levels of consumption.

Which is interesting, given what Hospedales apparently said next (according to Richard Lord, anyway):

She added that it was a strong indicator that alcohol use and abuse “was a major problem in T&T.”

The study noted above implies exactly the opposite. Ah well.

As for this:

She said from statistics it seemed that citizens of this country were drinking more alcohol than water

I demand to see those statistics, unless she was making a glib generalisation. In which case, WHY THE HELL DIDN’T THE REPORTER MAKE THAT CLEAR? Oh, right. Because it makes a sexy headline. *dies*

And so it ends:

Hospedales said the use of alcohol had caused a myriad of problems for individuals, families and the society as a whole. She quoted statistics which showed that in T&T “66 per cent of highway deaths was due to alcohol use, 63 per cent of fire deaths, 60 per cent of motor cycle deaths, 50 per cent pedestrian accidents, 50 per cent of drownings have all been due to alcohol consumption.”

And I edit, because someone should have:

Hospedales said alcohol had caused myriad problems for individuals, families and the society as a whole. She cited statistics [FROM? BECAUSE THIS IS QUITE CONTENTIOUS] which suggest that in T&T, 66 per cent of highway deaths were due to alcohol use. According to Hospedales, 63 per cent of fire deaths, 60 per cent of motor cycle deaths, 50 per cent of pedestrian accidents and 50 per cent of drownings have all been due to alcohol consumption.

For shame.

The absence of sufficiently qualified finance and business reporters from the halls of T&T’s newsrooms is even more galling now, as the global financial crisis deepens.

And make no mistake, it is a crisis – one that few people in the Caribbean seem to have heard of, and even fewer to understand.

A recent post over at Media Watch provides a compelling example of this disconnect. In it, the author of the blog – “Martine” – is taken to task by a reader over her description of the recent declines in the US stock market as a “crash”.

Good. Because while American equity markets have gyrated wildly in recent weeks, and have fallen quite preciptiously from their historic highs, they have not crashed.

But Martine makes two additional errors in that post.

First, she refers to her recent posts on the “US stock market crisis.”

There is no US stock market crisis. There is a global financial crisis – every equity market in the world has been hurt by the fall-out from what started as a meltdown in the US housing market. And the problems are not confined to equities (stocks) – credit (debt) markets have also been seriously affected.

Second, and more serious still, is this statement:

We hope Curtis Rampersad of the Express will take to heart your point as well, since he also referred to the issue as a crash in his story on the AIG bailout in the Wednesday edition.

“There will be no immediate fallout but the crash in the US financial system and a global recession may inevitably affect investors and consumers in Trinidad and Tobago, a financial expert has suggested.”

Rarely do I defend Express reporters, but Mr Rampersad did no such thing.

Rather, Martine is wrongly conflating two entirely separate issues – events that may be reasonably be described as having caused a “crash in the US financial system” and a panic in the US stock market, which is only a small part of the whole.

Mr Rampersad’s article as a whole does a decent job of summarizing a complex topic, and I will comment on it here (my comments are in brackets):

Monday’s New York trading also saw the American International Group, the world’s largest insurer, scrambling to raise capital to stay afloat.9

(Good, but context.Why did it need capital? What happened to its billions of dollars in assets? Also no mention that AIG is the parent company of Algico)

Ramkissoon said during a telephone interview yesterday that this was not the first time large institutions failed in the world.

(True, but not since the Great Depression in the US have so many failed so swiftly, and back in 1929 the world was neither so complex nor so interconnected)

At times like this, he said it was useful to take a long-term view as it would not last forever. He noted that falling stock prices could actually benefit investors once the market had bottomed out.

(Statements like this piss me off. Why is it useful? How could investors benefit? When will the market ‘bottom’? What about the interim?)

With regard to the current financial meltdown, Ramkissoon said: “I see this as a correction phase and when you take the long view, there comes a time when you have to roll with the punches.”

(If by rolling with the punches he means, “be spectacularly bailed out by the US government”, sure. The man is clearly a Keynesian – in the long run, we are all dead and what not)

Local investors and depositors at local commercial banks should not be worried “right now” as their investments were safe because financial institutions here did not engage in some of the risky ventures Wall Street firms executed.

(Tricky. How does he know that? And take RBTT – recently bought out by Canada’s RBC – how does you know that RBC has not engaged in risky ventures? There’s no evidence to back up this statemen, and therefore no way to judge its veracity)

He said people’s money was safe but cautioned that the global economic situation would affect locals through recessionary problems.

(Again, really? What about people who have invested in the stock market, which is always a risk? What about people who have invested in funds linked to the performance of overseas stock markets? What, exactly, are “recessionary problems”?)

The fall in prices for commodities like crude oil, the rise in global food prices, plus the negative effects on travel and tourism could affect countries like T&T, he added.

American Chamber president Eugene Tiah was also concerned yesterday about the financial troubles in the US.

“Clearly now there is a complexity in terms of investments. Companies and countries invest in complex ways and one area of concern may be how they are linked” to companies in the US, he said in a telephone interview from his Phoenix Park Gas Processors office at Pt Lisas.

(Now that’s a good quote)

These subjects are not easy to write about, by any means. But they are far too important to get wrong.

There has been an almost complete lack of coverage of the meltdown that started in the US housing market, other than occasional Pollyanna-esque comments from government and the Central Bank that everything is just fine.

This occasional series at The Liming House – The Credit Crisis and the Caribbean – will provide a different perspective, and an analysis of the potential effects of this economic and financial crisis on Trinidad & Tobago and the Caribbean.

It will also engage in bad-tempered criticism of business and economic reporting from the region.
——-

The Guardian’s front page story headilne on Saturday August 30th: “HCL FIRES 100″

The accompanying story, on page A5, bore the headline: “HCL retrenches 100″

Here’s the story, with my comments in brackets:

Inflation and a slow down in the real estate market are said to be the cause of Lawrence Duprey’s Home Construction Ltd having retrenched at least 100 workers between Wednesday and yesterday. (Are said…by whom? Loathe the lack of sourcing. Did one person say so? What were this person’s credentials, if any? Does he/she work at HCL (i.e a person familiar with the company)? Or is this the conclusion of the reporter, Sandra Chouthi?)

Commenting on the reports, Lisa Ghany, communications manager at HCL, said workers were not fired, but retrenched.

(At least there’s a comment from the company. But what an appalling lack of context. And what reports? So did this story appear elsewhere? And what’s the difference between retrenched and fired? From a company perspective, and in business -speak, a retrenchment is a reduction in the workforce in order to ensure the continued financial viability of said company. In other words, you retrench workers when it no longer makes financial sense to retain their services. All is not well at HCL. And where are the details on inflation? What’s the rate in Trinidad at the moment? Why would rising inflation hurt HCL? Total lack of actual reporting.)

She said more than 100 temporary, casual and permanent workers were retrenched, not 300, and that the “exercises are continuing.”

(From whence comes this 300 reference? Sparta? Context and background, please.)

She said HCL’s operations were being restructured in light of inflation and a slow down in the real estate market.

(Aha, so here’s the source of the boldfaced assertion in the lead of the story, a better version of which would have read: “Lawrence Duprey’s Home Construction Limited cut at least 100 jobs this week due to cost pressures from inflation and a slowdown in the real estate market, a company spokesman said.”)

Ghany said the retrenchment was part of a restructuring exercise as HCL had increased its staff from 500 to 2,500 in five years.

(What a sodding non-sequitur. Questions that should have been answered, or even asked: why does HCL need to restructure? Why had it quintupled its staff over five years? Come on.)

The HCL group has 22 companies.

(This sentence gets its own paragraph. Inexplicably.)

“We have different companies throughout the group that needed to be restructured to operate more efficiently,” Ghany said.

(And the Guardian provides not a jot of additional detail. Analysis? Forget it. I might as well be reading a press release.)

The retrenchment comes one week after Michael Fifi officially retired as chief executive officer of HCL. (Are the two events related?)

Its big project One Woodbrook Place is overbudget and behind schedule.

(What is One Woodbrook Place, for those readers who might not know? Where is it located? What is it? Condos? Office space? Was it a speculative build? (i.e. built on the hope that it would be rented out, but without any guarantee of such?))

Reports reaching the Guardian stated that HCL “fired” over 300 workers between Wednesday and Thursday of this week, with a total of 600 expecting to be sent home.

(Again with the lack of sourcing. Reports from whom? Why did you put “fired” in quotes? Is that what your source(s) said? Or are you obliquely acknowledging that “retrenched” is a more accurate description?)

Neither chief executive officer Hayden Ameerali nor chief operating officer Richard Le Blanc was available yesterday for comment.

(How many times did you try to reach them?)

One source said HCL was “significantly downsizing” with close to 1,000 workers due to be retrenched. Asked if the retrenchment exercise was linked with billion-dollar OWP, which is now 18 months behind schedule, the source said, “The whole thing has to do with One Woodbrook Place. It can make or break HCL.”

(This story is badly organised. And has no analysis in it whatsoever. How could OWP “make or break” HCL? Reputation? Financial stability? Did they bet the house on it?)

The source criticised the “inhumane manner” in which workers were informed of the retrenchment, some of whom have between five and ten years of service with HCL.

The source said workers were individually met with at HCL’s Organisational Centre, Orange Grove, and told they were “going home today.”

The cost of building OWP went from $800 million to $1.2 billion. The original completion date was December 2007.

(The lack of cohesion in this story reeks of poor editing. And alright, finally some numbers. But no indication of projected revenues from the project, so it’s left to the reader to surmise that “slow real estate market” + over-budget project = big headache. Sigh.)

On July 31, HCL announced that Fifi was retiring following a July 16 board meeting. Fifi officially left HCL’s helm of HCL on August 22, the same day he turned 66.

(What’s the retirement age in Trinidad again?)

And each time I pick up a copy of the Trinidad Express, or the Guardian, or the Newsday, I am disappointed, embarrassed, infuriated by the spelling and grammar mistakes, the obvious lack of editing, the flagrant plagiarism and copyright infringement, the errors and the inaccuracies.

Which brings me to the Guardian’s redesign. Aesthetically, the new design is a significant step up from the monochromatic drabness of the paper’s previous incarnation. But the changes are all superficial – in terms of content, it’s business as usual.

Take this gem from the editorial on Tuesday June 10 hyping the redesign:

“…readers will notice the introduction of new typography (called fonts) which should make the reading experience more enjoyable.”

New typography called fonts eh? You couldn’t make it up. But this is a minor quibble, compared with the delicious irony of an error in a story printed just above a blurb outlining the paper’s corrections policy on page A3.

(And now that I know the Guardian does have a policy of correcting “significant errors as soon as possible”, I intend to keep them informed of the many mistakes that litter their pages. I will report back on how that goes, so watch this space.)

The Media Watch blog also picked up on the error, noting:

On page A3 there’s an interesting story about a young man who appeared in court charged with turning off a computer in the Register General Department.

And would you believe directly below that story is a section called Getting It Right, which says “It is the Guardian’s policy to correct significant errors as soon as possible.”

Directly below.

You might say that was not a significant error since the writer of the story really just meant to say Registrar General’s Department…

There were some errors of transposition – is the name of gentleman referred to in the story “Man left to die on hospital bed” (story by Radhica Sookraj, photo by Rishi Ragoonath) Anthony Atlo or Anthony Alto?

And quite a lot of editorialising. Michelle Loubon’s report on a promoter “fuming” over the $200,000 he is being asked to pay to rent the Jean Pierre Complex for a Learie Joseph concert provides one example of this widespread practice: “[Glasgow] flatly refused to pay the exorbitant price.” (emphasis mine)

You may think $200,000 is exorbinant, Ms Loubon, but no one asked for your opinion. This is a news story, not an editorial.

And of course, my favourite bug bear, an absolute outbreak of pieces without bylines. Media Watch highlighed two of the more pernicious examples:

On page B34 there’s a story on sleep titled ‘How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?’. We thought it looked familiar, but there was no byline in the Guardian so we searched the net and found it – the same story we read last week at Time.com.

The story on page C16 on hearing loss also looked familiar. Ah yes. We read it on the BBC website on Monday. They copied down to the picture of the ear.

Come on editor, where is the attribution? Why can’t you stick in somewhere in the story where it was copied wholesale from? This is not the first time you’ve done this and it’s not a habit you should be happily repeating. What about copyright issues?

None of the financial market reports had bylines either, while the oil report on A11 was lifted – without attribution, of course – from a Reuters story. Separately, in the salmon-coloured Business Guardian, the Commentary on page 26 – “Apple to unveil faster IPhone [sic]” showed either a complete lack of news judgement, or a studied laziness on behalf of the editors.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Guardian, Apple unveiled a faster iPhone on Monday. This Bloomberg story, to which you devoted a whole page and an ad for West Indies Stockbrokers, is four days old. Four days. Please, get out from under that rock and sort your paper out.

Moving on.

Then there’s the blurb in the classifieds section, which blithely states: “you can place your ad by phone any pay by credit card.”

I presume they meant “and pay”, but you just never know.

And someone tell Bobie-Lee Dixon that it is possible to write an interview-based feature without fawning over one’s subject (in this case, Diane “Radical Designs” Hunt). And that “fashionist” is not a word.

But I digress. Here’s Dixon on Hunt:

Even in her “dress down mode” Hunt seems well colour coordinated with a look that just says, “hey I know my fashion,” and indeed she does.

With a winning smile across her face Hunt said her dream and aspiration is to make a serious contribution to fashion in helping to organise the industry and to make it more viable

And what is with the aversion to “said”? It’s a good word. A simple word. And it avoids having to write things like this:

Hunt also gave a breakdown of the different types of fashions that exists. “People only think of fashion as the designer,” she articulated.

I will not, for the sake of my aforementioned bloodpressure, comment on the sheer wrong-ness of “different types of fashions that exists.”

Sigh.

I’ve already written at length about their lack of a systematic corrections policy, and the superficiality of much of our reporting; today’s bugbear is their casual approach to bylines.

In the context of a newspaper article, a byline is simply the name and often, the title or position of the person(s) who wrote the story.

Sometimes, particularly in the case of editorials – which are opinion pieces written by editors or columnists – explicit bylines are omitted. Editorials in The Express, for instance, are labelled “Express Editorial.”

Since an editorial represents the officially-endorsed (or mandated) “line” of the newspaper on a given topic, the identity of the author is unimportant. The author is the newspaper.

But news stories and analysis pieces are different; they are supposed to be objective and fact-based, rather than polemical and necessarily partisan.

But no one is entirely objective, and no reporter, however scrupulous, is immune to bias.

Moreover, as the bloggers over Eastwick Communications, a technology PR agency, noted:

By the time we read any news article or watch any news segment, even the most “objective” news has been run through a series of bias filters. Each news department selects which stories to cover and which reporters to cover it. Each reporter selects which aspects of a story to focus on and which details of all possible details to include in the story. And editors make selective changes to fit a variety of criteria.

All news is filtered. This is an inescapable fact, and it is why the identity of the author of the story – or in the case of syndicated or externally-sourced content, the source – is so important.

If a story appears in a newspaper (or on a newspaper’s website) without a byline, I have no way of knowing who wrote it, or where it came from.

Here are a few case studies of why bylines matter.

The Trinidad Express ran a piece on Monday 17 March titled “RBTT…what to do?”. The online version of that story, and the only one I have access to, nowhere states where it came from, or who the author was.

It began thus:

In our last article we evaluated the fairness of the valuation of the Per Share Consideration in the proposed Amalgamation of RBTT Financial Holdings Ltd (RBTT) and RBC Holdings (Trinidad and Tobago).

The valuation was conducted using the Discounted Cash Flow methodology. You would recall that based on our calculations the Per Share Consideration of TT$40.00 was not considered unreasonable.

Our article today, the last in our short series, concludes our discussion of the question of valuation, by examining the Earnings Multiple Method, in order to further test the fairness of the valuation of the deal. We will also provide our recommendation to shareholders.

Now, this was not a news story, or even an analysis piece, and it was most certainly not written by a reporter.

This is investment advice, and I don’t know who this “we” is. If I were an RBTT shareholder (and I am not), I would want to know whether the entity advising me to accept the RBC buyout had a vested interested (i.e. they’d make money) in seeing the deal go through.

Without knowing who wrote the piece, I would have no way of checking that.

A counterpoint to the way this report is presented is a similar story in the Jamaica Observer, which the Express syndicated on March 19th (with the a glaring typo in the headline: “Jamacian analysts look forward to bank purchase.” Aargh.)

A financial expert in Jamaica believes that the proposed sale of RBTT Bank to the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) would increase diversity in the sector while another is saying the potential deal should be looked at in a long-term perspective.

Alexander James, a stockbroker at First Global Financial Services, echoed the view that “the RBTT sale brings a lot more diversity into the market”, the Jamaica Observer reported.

I object to the description of Mr Alexander James as a “financial expert”; a stockbroker is someone who buys and sells shares on behalf of clients on a commission basis. Mr James is not a financial analyst or investment advisor.

Still, at least the Observer named names and companies, and the piece as a whole is well reported.

Here’s another example of a missing byline, also from the Express on March 19, in the Business Magazine section:

Microsoft Corp chairman Bill Gates said he expects the next decade to bring even greater technological leaps than the past 10 years.

That’s fine. That’s uncontroversial. That’s seriously dishonest.

No Express reporter wrote that story. The author was a business writer named Matthew Barakat, of the Associated Press news service.

Now, the Express regularly uses material from services like AP, Reuters and Bloomberg. In newsroom jargon, these are the major “wire” services, which newspapers and other media outlets use for the stories and photographs they don’t themselves have the resources to produce.

These wire services allow newspapers like the Express to syndicate their copy – for a fee, and with the agreement that they will be credited as the source.

Reproducing content from outside sources – without attribution and without permission – is not just sloppy. It’s plagiarism.

The Express isn’t the only one to do this sort of thing, and on a regular basis. The Newsday is notorious for this.

The Media Watch blog highlighted a recent example, in which Newsday “reprinted” an article about the murder of British socialite Gale Benson in Trinidad in January 1972.

The piece, which Newsday ran on February 24, was lifted wholesale from a British newspaper – the Daily Mail. Newsday did not credit either the author (Victoria Moore), or the source.

This kind of behaviour would get an university undergraduate expelled, but the editors of Trinidad’s daily newspapers seem unconcerned – which is, in itself, deeply distressing.

1 – What are the economics of the proposed government-sponsored, Caribbean Airlines corporate/executive jet service?

2 – What are the current arrangements for government travel? Where do ministers et al go that requires the use of a jet leased from Guardian Holdings? How much does that arrangement cost? Why is it preferred to flying commercial services, either local or international?

3 – From Ria Tait’s Trinidad Express article on March 4 2008: “On allegations by Opposition Chief Whip Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj that CA received $350 million from the Government for the venture before Cabinet held discussions on the proposal last Thursday, Lok Jack said Caribbean Airlines did get money because “we had to begin negotiations and make downpayments”.” Caribbean Airlines had to make downpayments on an aircraft that hadn’t even been approved yet? Really?

4 – From the same article: “[Lok Jack] declined to say exactly how much money Government advanced to the airline or how much the service was estimated to cost on a monthly basis, saying that the airline was in a competitive situation.” Is anyone looking into this? We have a right to know how much our government is spending on this. And with whom, exactly, is CA “in a competitive situation” in the business of providing private jet travel to the government?

4 – Ibid: “Lok Jack said…the Government was “very interested” in being able to go on transatlantic trips and to travel African countries and therefore CA chose an aircraft which had the range to make such flights.” Why the focus on African countries? How much does a long-haul flight from Trinidad to Lagos (say) cost, in terms of fuel and wages for the pilots, etc? Are there no commercial alternatives?

5 – Ibid, but jumping around a bit: “[Lok Jack] confirmed statements in a Caribbean Airlines press release that Government would be underwriting the cost of the venture, eliminating “the commercial risk” to Caribbean Airlines.” Who owns Caribbean Airlines, exactly? What is the equity structure?

6 – In Juhel Browne’s Trinidad Express article on March 2 2008, Prime Minister Manning says a Caribbean Airlines jet service would be a cheaper air travel option for the State: “Right now, when some of us, when the Prime Minister travels in the region now, we do so by contracted private jet services. It costs a lot of money,” Manning said. Contracted jet services for regional jet travel? Seriously? Exactly how much is a lot of money? And again, why are commercial alternatives rejected?

7 – Who will have use of the services? Government only? Friends, family members, well-wishers? The Opposition? At what cost? Who pays what?

The relevant company insiders are fairly high-profile types who should be reasonably easy to track down. I’m tempted to make some calls.

I am continually bemused by our haphazard approach to errors and corrections, for instance.

But it is our apparent lack of reporters who actually understand business, finance, law and (the non bacchanalist aspects of) politics that is most worrying.

These are complex, multi-layered, specialist subjects, and to successfully cover them requires, in no particular order:

- Knowledge of/training in the subject areas, either academic or professional
- A commitment to keeping abreast of changes and developments in the field
- A significant amount of research and reporting, often on a daily basis
- A solid and informed network of sources and contacts

And even more so than in other areas of journalism, those charged with covering these beats must be able to explain often complicated concepts in a manner that can be grasped by non-specialists.

From my obsessive perusal of the major dailies, I’d say all of the above are lacking – or at least not evident.

There are exceptions: Camini Marajh of the Trinidad Express is an excellent business reporter.

Ms Marajh broke the story of RBC’s $2bn offer for RBTT, scooping the international news media who took days to catch up

Her coverage of the deal should be framed and used as a model by editors and reporters in other newsrooms:

In what is likely to be the biggest takeover deal in the Caribbean in recent times, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) is getting ready to buy out local banking giant, RBTT, in an acquisition priced at well over US$2 billion.

Sources report that an acquisition agreement is close to sign off by the Peter July-led Board of RBTT Directors.

Perfect. She leads on the significance and size of the deal, and immediately backs it up with reference to her sources.

She continues:

The RBC offer is said to contain a mix of cash and stock in a buyout that sources say has already secured the approval of key shareholders, among them the National Insurance Board (NIB) which has a 22 per cent interest, Guardian Holdings Ltd, a 14 per cent stakeholder and business tycoons Arthur Lok Jack, Richard Azar and Imtiaz Ahamad, who are listed among the largest individual stakeholders.

A crucial bit of information, although she could have explained why this important: if RBTT’s major shareholders were opposed to the deal, it would be unlikely to succeed.

And while the Peter July board has refused to say anything more than the bank is having “strategic discussions with other parties”, the Sunday Express understands that RBC, the latest in a series of Canadian suitors to knock on RBTT’s door, is the favoured partner for a takeover deal.

Both have financial incentives to see the deal through, according to financial sources. RBC, Canada’s largest bank is flush with acquisition dollars, assets of Can$563 billion and a market capitalisation of Can$69 billion.

Wonderful. Wonderful. And it gets better:

It is also trailing behind rivals Bank of Nova Scotia and First Caribbean International Bank (FCIB),a subsidiary of Canadian bank, CIBC in its Caribbean operations.

RBTT, Trinidad’s largest bank with assets of US$7 billion, has stumbled in recent years on issues related to management, flat earnings and growth limitation.

The RBC offer, comprising 60 per cent cash and 40 per cent RBC stock, if approved by shareholders, would give RBTT stockholders a much-needed boost with an option of cash and RBC shares – Can$55.26 at the close of trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Friday.

These paragraphs establish why the deal would be beneficial to both parties, are neatly hedged (“if approved by shareholders”) and give relevant financial details.

Still to be worked out, however, is the price of RBC shares which are to be listed on the local Stock Exchange under the depository receipt system used on the Nasdaq and other major Exchanges where a specified number of shares of foreign companies are issued and traded.

Sources say the listing of a big international bank like RBC on the TT Stock Exchange would be a major coup for this country and could well catapult Trinidad centre stage and a step closer to the Prime Minister’s dream of making this country the financial capital of the Caribbean.

When I got to this point in the story, I was tempted to applaud. Ms Marajh clearly had spectacular sources on this one, because details like that are gold dust. She explained, clearly and concisely, the concept of depositary receipts and gave still more context on why the deal would be important for T&T.

Financial analysts say if 20 per cent of the cash or $TT1.6 billion from the RBTT sale goes back into the local market, it could help the recovery process of the stock market which has been in the doldrums in recent time.

Speculation of a takeover has seen RBTT stock climb from the start of September by $3 closing at the end of trade on Friday at $34.01.

GHL, a substantial shareholder in RBTT, has also benefitted from the market speculation, closing at $25 on Friday after starting September at $20.02.

This story had everything – the interested players, the context of the negotiations, and crucially for an acquisition story, all the important numbers given in context.

But this story was exceptional. Too often, our media fail to get the basics, the fundamentals right.

More on that soon.

“Each misspelled word, bad apostrophe, garbled grammatical construction, weird cutline and mislabeled map erodes public confidence in a newspaper’s ability to get anything right” – from a 1998 study commissioned by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, via Poynter Online

Correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I am aware, none of the major Trinbagonian media outlets have an explicit corrections policy.

This is unacceptable, and here I’m speaking from the dual point of view of journalist and consumer.

Our media – print, online and broadcast- are notorious for errors of fact and omission, for butchering the English language, and for the unabashed conflagration of fact and opinion.

As a recent post over at the Manicou Report noted, in connection with a Guardian story about Education Minister Esther Le Gendre:

I don’t know about you, but when I am reading a straight news piece…I would prefer that the writer told me the facts of the story and allowed me to draw my own conclusion. I would prefer if he or she didn’t colour it with his or her own impressions and I would hope that the writers think of their readers (and in some case viewers) as intelligent and that they would allow us to connect the dots ourselves. When a journalist deviates from this it affect the quality of the work and makes the reporting sound like street corner gossip.

The post inspired a range of comments from readers, and none of them were positive.

“Media today is all about sensationalism,” said MDF in response. “I dread reading the newspapers today because you see so many grammatical and spelling errors.”

And yet, none of them make any apparent effort to correct their mistakes or to apologise for their errors. Why, then, should any reader, viewer or listener trust anything that comes from the mouths and pens of local journalists?

And what of the journalists themselves? Do they regret their errors? Do they wince when they re-read their stories or watch their broadcasts and notice that they got the name or age of the accident victim wrong? Do they even notice?

I am not convinced.

Other countries in the region get this right, or at least try to. For instance, a quick Google search led to me the editorial policy page of the Jamaica Gleaner and its comprehensive editorial code of practice.

An extract:

5.1 Accuracy

The Gleaner Company’s reporters are responsible for the accuracy of their work and they should be prepared to check, re-check and collaborate with their Editors in order to achieve this.

• The accuracy of stories should be confirmed before publication.
• Detailed documentation should exist to support stories and the reliability of sources.
• Rumour and unsubstantiated statements should be avoided in the interest of accuracy and fairness.
• The correction of mistakes of fact and the clarification of errors of context must be done promptly and ungrudgingly. Fair and timely opportunity should be given to persons, companies and organizations to reply to inaccuracies. In order to maintain consistency, corrections, clarifications and apologies are carried on page 2 of the relevant publication.

I could not find anything similar (at least not online) for The Guardian, The Express, or Newsday. Alas.