It’s an ill wind, we have long heard, that blows nobody good. Ditto, I think, Anil Roberts. Which may be why Kamla Persad-Bissessar has seen it fit to return him to the national parliament as a senator. If every current UNC Member of Parliament were somehow able to make a …
Read More »Media Monitor: UNC’s arresting image and Maraj’s masterclass on Kamla’s figures of speech
If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, we have heard a million times, bamboozle them with bullshit. Ralph Maraj is the exemplar par excellence of that message. On the post-4pm news segment of the i95.5FM afternoon show early last week, Maraj leapt to the defence of UNC Political Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar. …
Read More »Media musings: I tweet, therefore I am? Facts, truth and reader education
Lloyd Best used to say that Trinidad and Tobago is a country where people walk about with their heads empty. That may explain why, for so many of us Trinis, facts are sacred things. “Facts are facts,” India’s Jawaharlal Nehru once declared, “and they will not disappear on account of …
Read More »Media Monitor: Chalkdust in deh face? And who will guard the i95 guards?
You would not have thought so on Revue opening night but the Mighty Chalkdust is going to be in the Big Yard once more on Thursday night. Still singing and competing mere weeks short of his 80th birthday, he produced a performance of “Murder frenzy” which would have gone down …
Read More »Media Monitor: customer satisfaction and reporter work ethic clash on CCN and TTT
Ahahn! At last! It only take about 70 years. Too late fuh Blakie buh not fuh we! And de timing perfick; it only have a week or two to go before dis year Carnaval. (Big band music blassing. De tune is a famous 1954 classic by de now dead kaisonian …
Read More »Message to the media; musings on premature loss of a Laker as great as great Kobe
Basketball legends never die, a friend joked to me on WhatsApp last Sunday, they just keep hitting fadeaways. And confessing that he had felt physically sick when he first heard the news of Kobe Bryant’s untimely death in a helicopter crash earlier in the day, he explained that, for him, …
Read More »Media Monitor: On T&T English, the US Senate’s brown tongues and crossing Trump
In the Senate impeachment trial of Donald J Trump, Adam Schiff spoke good, very good. (I could have wrote ‘was very good’ but that wouldn’t be American in any way, shape or form.) A classy, clearly highly educated advocate, Schiff doubtless impressed all with his eloquence and general delivery. He …
Read More »Media Monitor: A comment on communication, commas and a couple of clangers
Friends, Trinis, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come out not to bury our media but to improve them. The Express of Thursday 28 November carried a headline that said, “STOP IT GARY.” It drove me to the edge. I had made a solemn promise to myself that I was …
Read More »MEDIA MONITOR: CPL cricket maths matter, mea culpa, ad nausea and missing Machel
People living in glass houses, we have heard over and over, have to careful bout pelting stone. As a long-time Wired868 contributor, I have made it a major mission of mine to monitor the media’s many mistakes. And my parents, teachers and multiple mentors—God rest all their souls—have made me …
Read More »Media monitor: An off-Monday for voice, vision and print? You’re kidding!
Jinks. India’s Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane’s all-formats skipper, has often called him by that nickname in post-match interviews. But since he has made a splash or two in the Indian Premier League and occasionally been a stand-out performer for the Indians over the last few years, Kohli’s handful of familiar …
Read More »Eras in a bun dense: Wednesday’s perfect storm of genuine media howlers
Let us call them simply ‘moments.’ I use the neutral term to refer to those momentous instances when you spot an error that is so glaring that you could not ignore it even if you wanted to. On Wednesday 26 June, I had four such moments, which I should like …
Read More »Howzat? Do the T&T sports media think it’s abuse to hit your own wicket?
When we hear stories from victims of domestic abuse, sometimes we want to ask why did the victim stay in such an abusive relationship for as long as she did. Why endure such abuse, we wonder, when you could ‘easily’ just leave that toxic environment? Often the victim offers the …
Read More »