IF YOU HAVE NEVER experienced it as a journalist, either you have not been around long enough or you are practising your craft in an environment where you want to be everybody’s friend.
If, however, you are truly representing the public as you are supposed to, you would have suffered.
What am I on about this time? Last week one of our most promising young journalists, Alex Downes, came to me with this look of utter consternation. He had called manager of engineering at the Barbados Water Authority Charles Marville and was getting no cooperation with the questions he was asking.
Apparently, Marville was upset with our Editorial, which in essence told the BWA to get its act together and correct the problem of effluent that was leaking from the South Coast Sewerage System on to the streets and causing a major headache for business operators, employees and residents.
No response
According to Downes, Marville believed we were not being fair to the authority. Maybe he was correct. Maybe our Editorial was not fair. But who do you blame when you are part of an agency that has perfected the art of not responding to the public – or the news media. One week prior when we tried to get the same BWA to respond to us, officials promised they would, but skilfully avoided further phone calls, instead making a statement on CBC-TV the same night and through the Barbados Government Information Service later.
What conclusion do we draw from that approach? They want to have their say, in their way, without having to answer the obvious questions that will arise. They want to benefit from sanitised journalism. I’m sorry, we don’t do that down here.
Now in all fairness, the BWA’s corporate communications manager Joyann Haigh is the exception. She will readily respond to phone calls and diligently seek out information on our behalf, but you can’t help but get the impression that in many instances she is fighting the same battles we do with her colleagues who seem to believe that what they do is the BWA’s business and not the public’s.
So for the record Mr Marville, we don’t wake up each morning, drive to Fontabelle and meet in some dark, secret room to determine how we will embarrass the BWA, or any other agency or individual.
We wish quite often that the news was more pleasant, but when a retired teacher calls to say that for weeks she can’t venture into her backyard because it is filled with effluent that leaked from your sewerage system, should we ignore her for the sake of not offending you.
When a restaurant owner, an operator of a small office, or the proprietor of a business offering optical services complains that they are constantly bombarded by the sewage, including toilet tissue floating in their car park, and their clients are tracking it into their premises on their shoes, should we tell them call the BWA?
There is no personal agenda involved. We are not out to get the BWA or any of its leadership. All we seek are answers on behalf of those affected, and the ability to let our citizens know how their tax dollars are being spent – or not spent. I’m sure that you must know they have a right to know that.
Just in case you are open to a suggestion or two, check this out. If you are open, frank and detailed with reporters they are in a far better position to communicate the information in a manner that your customers would understand, and possibly appreciate.
Ring hollow
Quite frankly, most of the explanations offered by BWA officials during the course of the year for water outages and shortages in many rural districts rang hollow to me. But a few weeks ago I had a long informal chat with a good friend with significant training in hydrology and connections to the authority, and by the time he was done I had a much better appreciation for the problem.
Three days ago an experienced journalist who has not had reason to report in any way on the water issues, but who had been following the situation closely, said the same thing to me. An informal chat with a friend who happened to be an engineer at the BWA left him saying: “I can now appreciate what they were going through.”
The moral of the story, Mr Marville, is that if you and your colleagues at the BWA would take the time to speak with the people you just might be surprised to learn that they are sensible enough to understand. The same applies to journalists.
