The Liming House

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Several months ago, I bemoaned T&T’s “apparent lack of reporters who actually understand business, finance, law”.

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.

Related posts

• T&T needs better reporters
• The T&T Guardian needs more than a cosmetic change
• Says who? (or, why bylines matter)

There is much about the local media that raises my blood pressure, but today’s feature in the Sunday Express on the origin of the word ‘badjohn’ is a beautifully-written exception.

I’ll cite only the beginning, but the piece - written by Kim Johnson - is worth reading in its entirety:

Of the countless jailbirds to tread this island, none has cast a longer shadow than John rcher, who set the local, probably the regional, and - who knows? - maybe even a world record with 19 criminal convictions, and whose very name would come to mean a ruffian and a bully.

—

This evening, Trinidad & Tobago will play Bermuda in a do-or-die qualifier for the 2010 World Cup. I will not comment here on the heartbreaking state of Trinbagonian football, but I will comment on Brent Sancho’s Q&A with the Express.

Which is to say, Brent Sancho turns me into a giggling school girl. No joke.

Express question: biggest turn-on in a woman?
Sancho: Nice long legs!
Me: Aha! I have great legs!

Express: Biggest turn-off?
Sancho: Smoking
Me: Woohoo! Don’t smoke!

Express: Best book ever read?
Sancho: The long walk to freedom, Nelson Mandela
Me: OMG, he reads? FTW!

Express: must visit before you die?
Sancho: Japan
Me: Dude! We were clearly meant to be.

Etc. Tsk.
—

Things are not going according to plan, where plan = move back to Trinidad, do MSc at UWI, sort country out. Not necessarily in that order.

Moving back to Trinidad is harder than I thought it would be, because I’m in housing limbo, the work about which I am most passionate demands that I be either in New York or London and UWI hasn’t even bothered to let me know whether I’ve been accepted into my hoped-for program.

That, and I’ve been here almost two months and have totally failed to engage with the country - I’m still working full time for my overseas employer, I’m not doing much any liming and I’ve switched from behaving like I’m moving here to acting like this is an extended holiday.

Except it’s not so much a vacation as an exercise in daily frustration.

So it go. As may I.

Related posts

• The T&T Guardian needs more than a cosmetic change
• Says who? (or, why bylines matter)
• This is not the time to not know what you’re talking about

I'm always fascinated (and sometimes irked) by outsiders' perceptions of Trinidad and Tobago. In this video, which I rediscovered while trawling through my inbox, Andrew Zimmern chronicles his encounters with dasheen, pig tail, callaloo and "baconshark".

Related posts

• Thoughts on the “Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People”
• Thoughts on .tt
• The dog died

For the sake of my blood pressure, I try not to read the local newspapers. This is difficult, given my obsession with news and media and my day job as a reporter, and more often than not I succumb.

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.

Related posts

• Says who? (or, why bylines matter)
• This is not the time to not know what you’re talking about
• T&T needs better reporters

Under Article 8 (18/1) of the Immigration Act, homosexual men and women are not allowed to enter the country. Section 13 of the Sexual Offences Act 1986 criminalises “buggery”. This Section provides a penalty of up to life imprisonment, if committed on a minor; up to 10 years’ imprisonment if committed on an adult (18 years) by another adult; up to 5 years’ imprisonment if committed by a minor on an adult. Section 16, relating to “serious indecency”, provides a penalty of up to 20 years’ imprisonment for homosexual acts between men and between women.

This is one of those topics that I have long sought to write about and never quite succeeded. I have drafts saved on this very subject dating back to 2002. What’s changed? Very little, and therein lies the rub.

And then there were these comments from Bruce Golding, the Jamaican Prime Minister, during an interview on the BBC’s Hardtalk program:

BBC: Do you in the future want to live in a Jamaica where a gay man or a gay woman could be in the cabinet?

BG: Sure they can be in the cabinet - but not mine.

BBC: Do you want to live in a Jamaica where they can be and they should be and it would be entirely natural for them to do so?

BG: I do not know that that is the direction in which we will go.

So far, so straightforward, right? No. It is more nuanced than that, because here’s the exchange that preceded those quotes:

BBC: What are you doing about [the violence toward homosexuals in Jamaica]

BG: Well, we have given instructions that crimes against persons because of their sexual orientation must be pursued with the same vigour of any other crime.

BBC: But they are not, are they?

BG: Generally speaking they are - they are now. We do have a long-standing culture that is very opposed to homosexuality. I think that is changing. I believe there is greater acceptance now that people have different lifestyles, that their privacy must be respected.

BBC: Are you more accepting now … because in 2006 you were quoted in the Sunday Herald newspaper: “Homosexuals will find no solace in any cabinet formed by me.”

BG: In appointing a cabinet, a PM exercises judgement. That is his exclusive responsibility. There is no right to be in a cabinet.

BBC: But you have just told me that Jamaica is on track to give equality before the law to homosexuals - but you yourself have said that “homosexuals will find no solace in a cabinet formed by me?” That has nothing to do with equality before the law? Do you not have a duty to consider people on their merits - for cabinet positions indeed in any part of government?

BG: No. I consider people in terms of their ability and the extent to which they are going to be able to exercise their function, their independence.

BBC: You also clearly and patently consider them in terms of their sexuality.

No. That’s a decision that I make. That’s a decision that every prime minister makes. A prime minister must decide what he feels would represent to the Jamaican people a cabinet of ministers who will be able to discharge their function without fear, without favour, without intimidation. I make that choice.

BBC: What kind of signal does that send about Jamaica to the outside world? Indeed, to potential investors, to countries that look at Jamaica.

BG: One signal that it sends is that Jamaica is not going to allow values to be imposed on it from outside. We are going to have to determine that ourselves and we are going to have to determine to what extent those values will adopt over time - to change in perception and to change in understanding as to how people live. But it can’t be on the basis that lobby groups far and away from Jamaica will define for Jamaica how it must establish its own standards and its own morals.

And that, in a nutshell, is why homophobia in the Caribbean is so difficult to understand, so easy to misconstrue, and so challenging to confront - it is a morass of Victorian prudishness and religious fundamentalism combined with an extreme interpretation of masculinity and imbued with a sense of developing-country nationalism and a post-colonial assertion of sovereignty.

And it is everywhere. The Barbados Underground blog, for instance, is apoplectic that the “homosexual agenda is gaining ground in Barbados,” noting:

The issue of homosexuality will predictably evoke a flurry of comments which will seek to label the Barbados Underground household as homophobic. By now it should be evident that the BU household is firmly moored to a traditional set of values which has served our household well. The unwillingness of Barbadians to be proactive in structuring the kind of society which it wishes to adopt on a moral front is disappointing and regrettable.

Unfortunately certain core values which have guided our society very well through the years are being diluted. We appreciate that we have to respect the sexual orientation of all of our people. However, there is nothing to say we have to agree with it. We may appreciate in the so-call free world market the need for Barbados to operate in a common economic space. What we don’t appreciate is the willingness by Barbados to prostitute its value system for thirty pieces of silver.

The argument there is similar to Mr Golding’s in its appeal to “core” values, the rejection of any attempt to superimpose an alien (read: non-Bajan) and “dilutive” set of beliefs onto the “traditional” way of doing things.

Still, there is one aspect of these positions with which I do agree - any change in attitude or legislation cannot merely be a response to political or economic pressure from the UK or the US.

The Caribbean, in asserting sovereign rights, needs to take some sovereign responsibility.

So where to start? One suggestion comes from James Marchand, in a letter to the Jamaica Gleaner:

Put reasonable laws in place

The gay people of Jamaica do not need the permission of churches, Government or public figures to live our lives and have sex with whom we choose. However, we do want the Government to put its policy where its mouth is and ensure that violent acts against people of different sexual orientation and also other vulnerable members of society, such as the disabled, mentally ill and even people living with HIV and AIDS, are punished to the full extent that law provides.

This should be done with the creation of a hate crimes law which would serve specific penalties for persons accused of harming or murdering people because of their differences, whether perceived or otherwise.

In reality, it only takes an assumption or a suspicion of being homosexual in some Jamaican communities for someone to be attacked and brutalised. Of the many cases that have come to public attention of ‘gay’ men being beaten and even killed, very few have been as a result of these said men being caught in compromising positions. Yet, they are set upon and, in what might seem like sanctioned events, the all too familiar scene unfolds.

Indeed.

Further reading

1. ‘What Jamaica wants‘ - Church, gays divided on PM’s BBC interview - Jamaica Gleaner
2. Homophobic silliness and a failure of leadership- Jamaica Gleaner (Editorial)
3. Preparing for the World’s Backlash - Francis Wade/Moving Back to Jamaica
4. “Jamaica is represented in our imaginations as a space in which heterosexuality is homogenised national identity” - Tino Pinnock / Raw Politics Jamaica Style

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• Stiff Upper Lip
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In ten days I will be moving back to Trinidad for at least three months, and probably quite a lot longer.

I am totally unprepared.

First, the basics. I won’t have an apartment of my own (and will be living with one parent or another, which is a regression on all sorts of levels). I won’t have have a car (and since I never quite mastered the art of Trinidadian public transportation, this is a scene). I won’t have reliable access to a high-speed internet connection (which I need for work to survive).

If I were moving to London, to New York, even to Hong Kong - I would know what to do. I’d be able to find an apartment with just a bit of legwork, a couple of phone calls and the good old interweb. I wouldn’t need - or want - a car, because I could avail myself of trains, trams, buses, ferries or taxis. Broadband would be a fact of life, not an expensive and hard-to-find luxury.

I would know how things worked - bills, taxes, banking. And if I didn’t know, I could find out - with a bit of legwork, a couple of phone calls and the good old interweb. I wouldn’t need to “know someone on the inside”. I wouldn’t need to slip a crisp bill or two to a surly public servant in order to get my driver’s license renewed without enduring three days of lining up.

Eventually, of course, I will figure all of this out. And learn to live with it. The problem, at this point, is that I wish I didn’t have to.

Yes, I am spoilt. I am one of those people. But there is no economic reason for Trinidad’s infrastructure to be in such total disrepair. For public services to be so inefficient. For the private sector to be so reluctant to embrace the fundamentals of customer service.

For us to be stuck in a third world way of doing things even as we adopt all the first world trappings - flashy cars, expensive restaurants, wine bars, and soaring, soul-less skyscrapers.

We need to forget Vision 2020. We need vision right now.

Related posts

• This is not the time to not know what you’re talking about
• T&T needs better reporters
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“Dude, you hear how much Curepe doubles is cost these days? Is all kinda $4, $5 people paying for one doubles.”

I don’t know if I can afford to live in Trinidad - and by that I mean, I don’t know if I will be able to afford the same standard of living to which I have grown accustomed after six years overseas.

The extent of the food price inflation is shocking, and I’m not just talking about the fact that $1 will only get you two pholourie these days.

Every time I go home I marvel at the rising cost of staples like bread, milk, chicken, vegetables.

How do people live? How is it that we, as a nation, seem to be able to absorb these price shocks without so much as batting an eyelid or giving up our weekly forays to Zen, Space, insert-name-of-trendy-club-here?

How do we afford all those cars on the road? How do we afford to pay rents that are increasingly being quoted in US dollars?

I don’t understand it. Explanations welcome.

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Trinidadian newspapers infuriate me.

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.

Related posts

• The T&T Guardian needs more than a cosmetic change
• T&T needs better reporters
• This is not the time to not know what you’re talking about

Inquiring minds want to know:

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.

Related posts

• Says who? (or, why bylines matter)
• Thoughts on .tt
• This is not the time to not know what you’re talking about

There are many, many things about Trinbagonian media in general, and our newspapers in particular, that make me want to pull my hair out.

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.

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