Who Killed Caribbean Journalism?

It hit close to home, the CNN bombshell announcement that Chris Cuomo had been “suspended indefinitely,” then outright fired, for interfering with official investigations of sexual misconduct charges against his older brother Andrew, governor of New York, recently resigned.

Addressing the circumstances on his SiriusXM radio show, Chris Cuomo confessed: “It hurts to even say it. It’s embarrassing. But I understand it. Let’s get after it.”

He said he understood why some people feel as they do about what he did. “I’ve apologized in the past and I mean it,” he went on. “The last thing I ever wanted to do is compromise any of my colleagues. They have a process and I respect it. I’m not going to talk about this any more.”

Text messages and emails revealed the TV presenter had been in touch regularly with his brother’s aides and had pleaded to let him help craft a response to the accusations by several women that then governor Cuomo had on a number of occasions interacted with them inappropriately.

As I say, the news reminded me of a time in 1988, soon after I’d relocated to Saint Lucia after several years living in the United States. One Sunday morning, I was in the middle of breakfast, I’d taken a phone call from one of my sisters in Canada. What she proceeded to tell me amounted to my worst nightmare: My younger brother Vaughan, a long-time Toronto resident, had decided to return home and set up his own car repair shop. The evening before my sister’s call friends had thrown him a farewell party that broke up in the early morning hours. Also in attendance was a couple, reportedly close friends and neighbors of my brother. My devastated sister was unsure how he found himself at their residence after they left the party in separate vehicles. What she knew for certain was that our brother had several times been fatally stabbed all over his upper torso as he lay asleep or otherwise unconscious on the couple’s living room couch.

I remember telling my sister before we ended the recalled awful phone conversation that the suspect, whose wife she said had notified the police, would likely get away with murder. As anticipated, he had readily taken responsibility for my brother’s death and pleaded guilty while laying the blame on booze. In Canada, as in the Caribbean, a wife is not legally bound to give evidence against her spouse. At the conclusion of a short trial the man who had confessed to slaughtering my brother finally received a velvet-gloved slap on the wrist.

I published a related story weeks after the incident. By then, thanks to creative sources in Canada, home-based Saint Lucians seemed to know a lot more than I about the case. A significant number of strangers claiming to be long-time friends of the deceased had contacted me to express condolences and to share anecdotes that at any other time I might’ve considered funny.

Months went by without further public references to the murder, until I published in the STAR a series of articles about a local prime minister’s proclivities. Suddenly I found myself under attack by some of the nation’s most respected citizens, among them church leaders. They shared a common sentiment: Why had I written such embarrassing stories about the leader of the nation but not about my brother’s adulterous affair that had cost him his life? My brother was caught in flagrente delicto by a jealoushusband, they reminded me. Why had I not been as forthcoming about the bloody details?

Over the years I’ve landed in hot merde more times than I dare recall, and mostly because I’d written about   aspects of my friends’ working lives. I remember well an instance when a normally reasonable individual sought to reprimand me after I’d published my report on a high profile domestic-violence court trial. My persnickety critic could find nothing amiss in what I’d written. Still she insisted that I’d covered the trial “only because you don’t like the guy!” It meant nothing to her that the wife beater in question was at the time a member of government with ministerial responsibility for the welfare of women! 

My long-time friend Arnold Schwarzenegger would have nothing to do with me for close to three months after I’d commented somewhat sarcastically on his published remarks about his friend and fellow Austrian   Kurt Waldheim, the former U.N. Secretary who was at the time press fodder on account of his alleged connections with Hitler. When finally we broke our inconveniencing silence and I asked why Arnold why he remained cordial toward other writers despite their sometimes disparaging reviews of his movies, he replied in a tone altogether new to me: “But Ricky, you are my friend.” I’ll never forget how he spoke the last two words of that sentence. The sound continues to haunt me some thirty years later.

Closer to home there are House speakers Peter Foster Q.C. and Claudius Francis, Sir Neville Cenac, recently retired Justice Lorraine Williams, all long-time friends.   At one time or another, however, they had banished me to Coventry for writing or speaking about them as if we did not share a special relationship. I hasten to confess I often derive particularly perverse pleasure from tormenting the above-mentioned with my own slightly devilish recollections of our several contretemps!  

When asked by onlookers why we remain friends despite our several public disagreements, I often cite Norman Podhoretz, bestseller author of “Ex-Friends.” His response to a similar question was: “We remain close friends because our disagreements have never been about fundamental beliefs!” Yes, a mouthful.

To return to the brothers Cuomo: It can hardly be the world’s best kept secret that in the United States especially the media business (yes, business!) is nothing short of cut-throat. What may not be common knowledge is that many Talk-TV presenters are in real life not nearly as hateful of one another as their warring audiences imagine. For the most part the ostensible sworn enemies are actually quite cordial when they meet. Behind their actor’s masks are professionals respectful of their shared profession. Chris Cuomo’s earlier cited self-reproach merits repetition: “The last thing I wanted to do was compromise my colleagues. They have a process and I respect it.”

Dan Rather and Brian Williams lost their high-salaried TV jobs after publicly misrepresenting certain situations. Still they continue to place the integrity of their profession ahead of all personal considerations.

Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, never cheerleaders for the Cuomos, have nevertheless stood in their corner, even as they continue to pelt the brothers with customized Molotov cocktails. Their insinuated support has not been without its price, however. They have never attempted to whitewash their brothers by another network. But both have dismissed as hypocritical, CNN’s holier than thou attitude, pretending not to understand how blood can sometimes trump rules of the game, regardless of possible penalties.      

As already suggested, in Saint Lucia it’s altogether another matter. The chat-room activity inspired by TV presenters and their similar sound bites speaks volumes. Seldom is the generated chatter related to the news content. Of far more interest is the newscaster’s attire, his or her hair, the color of their shirt, their physical attributes, and the day’s latest unreported, unsubstantiated vile rum-shop gossip. A politician’s reported misconduct is of less concern to local news followers than his party affiliation. The chat-room buzz—at the very least a suggestion of our general attitude—always has less to do with potential criminality on the part of an elected official than with the made up on the spot history of the reporter.   

When it seems all our once revered institutions have collapsed under the combined weight of partisan politics and accommodating journalism, should we be surprised if we find it difficult to discern the complicit media that is of our own creation from the worst of politicians? It’s no surprise that the Cuomo fiasco has failed to generate any related commentary by media personnel in Saint Lucia, where a contaminated former journalist turned government cosmetician can, without a critical word from the press, issue on social media death threats against a man who allegedly owes him $300. Not a word, not a word, not a word—not even from his ostensibly image-conscious current employers was there the smallest sign of concern.

The chickens have come home to roost. Lately some of us have been bemoaning in tip-toe tones what appears to be a Saint Lucia without standards or scruples. Also, perhaps coincidentally, without journalists. A possible indication that some among us have not turned altogether amoral. Hopefully we’ll also soon come to acknowledge the wisdom in Thomas Jefferson’s legendary preference for a free and respectable press  but without government than the extant reverse!