You're no Joe the Plumber, Mr Prime Minister

Local media "got a wake up call from hell last week".  But it could be a blessing in disguise. Why? Because finally and collectively, media houses appear  to have shaken off their  inertia, exhibited by a deafening silence  on the broadcast code,  to take a much required hard stance against  the Prime Minister for his ill fated  visit to 94.1 Boom Champion Radio.

The Express newspapers (still my favourite daily) devoted its prized front page yesterday to editorialise the issue and columnists and announcers both on and off-air have pontificated on the significance of a Prime Minister leaving his barber  in San Fernando late last month, driving some 40 miles into Port of Spain, cordoning off a part of a street and walking into a radio station to complain  about comments he had heard on the air while he was getting his hair cut. 

Was his angst valid? Sure. Personal commentary has no place in a newscast. The on air-announcers were wrong.

 But the collective thinking is that the Prime Minister also went too far. For me, the most telling issue is that Mr Manning felt he had every right to pursue his course of action in his capacity as “an ordinary citizen.”

But Joe the Plumber Mr Manning is not, and his actions point their scrooge like fingers to the prevailing rumour that Mr Manning is full of his own self importance and in fact   listens to no one. Not his handlers. Not his communications specialists. Not his PR professionals. Clearly not his more media savvy wife.

I am actually glad ‘Boomgate’  happened if only because truths were revealed. 

Firstly, there is a need for standards in 94.1 which all announcers and newscasters should adhere to.   As the Express said in its front page editorial, the country "has had a free press to the point where some media houses have, in our view, been guilty of excesses, even execrable ones."

But most importantly coming on the heels of the proposed broadcast code, the Prime Minister’s actions suggest the birthing of something ominous, the weight of heavy handed state measures against a free and open media as evinced not only by the broadcast code, but also   recent comments made by the Minister of Health as well as Minister of Information thinly veiled comments to journalists that the Government would need to revaluate its advertising spend.

There are always clouds before a storm. And this latest wake up call signifies dark days yet.