When you resort to attacking the messenger and not the message, you have lost the debate.– Addison Whithecomb
In its publishing of news and comment, the Press plays a crucial role in presenting the political reality in a free society. Readers are not only informed about the issue at hand, but guided on the gravity that ought to be attached to it.
In reflecting on what politicians say during a campaign, or elsewhere, the print media may determine the veracity of it, its significance and relevance, or its effectiveness or ineffectuality. In a nutshell, the media may set the agenda.
It can never be the other way around, where politicians and their hacks, business moguls and their marketeers, academia or the religiose do it for us.
And agenda setting here means the business of the Press in bringing important social matters to the attention of the public by way of balanced news, and analysis of the said reportage, and commentary by all –?including readers – on what has been dispensed. Understandably then, when the Press devotes substantial attention to an issue, the public will perceive the same as important.
When the Press takes up such topics as rising prices, frozen wages, layoffs, the sargassum seaweed, climate change, and even the coming general election, the public will be made to think upon these things. They will generate debate – no doubt, dispute; but that is the nature of things in a democracy.
The Press, as a major source of political information, may help to shape public opinion by bringing all the salient issues to the forefront; but in this neck of the woods we will make no claim to influencing individual attitudes towards any particular political party.
Our content and intent are not partisan in respect of the issues we report on and analyze. Nor are the personal and public views expressed through us necessarily a reflection of our stand; on occasions we are the mere vehicle of “bad news”.
And worse yet, we have come to see, are the tidings when they are apparently not favourable to a political party. As it stands now, the Democratic Labour Party, not faring all that well in the most recent CADRES poll commissioned by THE?NATION, keeps whining about bias by us.
Political opinion polls, as we take them, are indicators of what can happen, or may, at a given point. Information gleaned from these and acted upon appropriately could make a big difference in time to come.
It serves well then always to pay attention to the message – no matter how unnerving – and never to be resolved to shoot the messenger.