Patrick Manning is always, always a politician, as journalists should know better than anyone. So for him of all people to make a disclosure like this (even though only a partial one) naturally caught journalists off guard. And journalists are folks too: they feel like anyone else does when a near-stranger--especially when he's someone whom in other respects they know well--suddenly makes a highly personal and distressing revelation like that. Like anyone else, they just didn't know what to say for a little while. I'm not sure I agree it was a bad moment for journalism at all.

I'm inclined to add that not only did they (the journalists) miss a rare opportunity of a glimpse at the man behind the political mask but they froze wholesale and never recovered and that's the point. Of course we are all human and susceptible to shock but as journalist we are trained not to falter at such monumental moments. And I must say it was a shrewd move by PMPM, in my opinion, he seemed to know that his bombshell would render the herd speechless. I'd go further than saying it was a bad moment for journalists. I'd say at the very least it was a scandalous lack of journalistic brass.

For a moment, just a moment Nalia I wondered if they understood that malignant tumour on the left kidney is the same as kidney cancer, which as you said raises different kinds of possibilities . A friend who was actually at the conference said that for the first time, she felt Mr Manning looked old.
I think his announcement was a moment for cameras to zoom in, for reporters to abandon their prepared questions, for a different kind of story to emerge, for good TV. This was an opportunity missed.

Can't speak for overseas journalists but I don't know of any local ones who are trained not to falter at any particular moment or indeed trained at all. And yes, of course PM was manipulating that moment, and has reasons of his own, which have yet to become apparent, for telling the country about his illness. Remember, this is a man who didn't say a word about being ill when he first went to Cuba for heart surgery in 1998.
Having a malignant tumour on your kidney is not the same as having kidney cancer. That's what he wants people to believe. But it's not what he said. Remember when he came back from Cuba in 2004 & wasn't at all his usual smug self? If in fact this tumour isn't a primary cancer but a metastasis from elsewhere, it means he's suffering from advanced cancer already & is a lot sicker than he wants people to think. And kidney cancer would be bad enough--it's one of the few in which no major advances in treatment have been made until very recently....

Good insight Judy

It just occured to me why the angles you see were missed by reporters, as Ms Raymond rightfully said, reporters here aren't trained generally, much less to empathise, and I guess Judette, that empathy could be the major emotion behind YOUR angles. Without 'feeling', you most times don't SEE the bigger picture

You can be clinical and still get a story but I think the human element is always more impactful.

I suppose that one must treat the whole issue of a leader's health differently, Judy what do you think? Since the whole issue of what next arises? Or rather who next?

I personally thought the ideal question would be why, with vision 2020, why does he have to go to Cuba to have his operations?

A decade of an oil booms yet most of our politicians seek their healthcare either in the States or Cuba (and those that seek local help do so at private institutions).

I'm apathetic to most of our politician's personal health based on their apathy to administering our government.

Judes, really you are needed back in the news room.

Of course it was a bad moment in journalism. One of many.
Somebody, senior or junior, should have fumbled, faltered, stammered or otherwise signalled and encouraged follow-up questions on what may be the biggest story of our time.
Reporters also lack penetration and contacts: he had apparently told his constituency people the story the night before; none of them has a journalist friend, family or must-tell acquaintance?
No reporter keeps touch with what the PM does when he comes home to his constituency, such as when he visits barbershops or rumshops...or who knows?

Definitely the US media would have departed from the hot-button issues of the day and open a deeper conversation on the human aspect. We see this all the time on news networks like CNN for instance, Dr. Sanjay would have been giving a full segment on the condition and what the short- and long-term implications could be for the PM.

But you know, upon viewing the video, the PM treated questions about his condition somewhat curt and dismissive, defensive even when talk of a successor came up. The guardian reporter who started to touch on the "human element"...how did he feel...what of his wife--the PM pretty much cut off the discussion with the statement of his not being afraid of death and so on. His body language spoke volumes that he did not want to talk about it.

Maybe the TT media handled it appropriately.

Laura, there are and have been many reasons why a/the PM would be economical with the truth in revealing the state of his health or a great many other things, so I am not sure I wd want to speculate on all of them--I'm not devious enough. But as other people have pointed out, he has always portrayed himself as Mr Iron Man--"I'm not afraid of death" etc. So if he's voluntarily admitting to a life-threatening illness & needing major, risky surgery, chances are there's more in the mortar than the pestle.
He has to account for his being out of the country for several weeks--probably longer than he's saying now, & even then he may not be well enough to return to work straight away or ever.
Maybe he wants to see who will come out of the woodwork as the pretender to his throne.
As for people knowing in advance & reporting it: Christine Kangaloo is the only minister previously to have admitted to & discussed her cancer; none of the other members of the cancer cluster in Cabinet have spoken about theirs or even made their illness officially known. If you have the right contacts you'll hear about who's sick with what, but the culture is not to disclose, so even if you know about it, you don't have a story if the sufferer won't admit to being sick.
All of that contributed to the media's being caught completely off guard & not knowing what to ask next. PM's deliberately obscure way of putting it & political reporters' understandably low level of medical education didn't help either.
Not sure who has the time to follow the PM & lime around his constituency with his or her ear to the ground. In an ideal world, of course that would happen.

Two or three sentences into a response to the above, I thought to check something, then lost what I had written. Should it surface somewhere unintended, I claim the blame.
As I was saying, or thought I was saying, bad moments in journalism come and come again, and there seems no need to try spinning their reality away.
The "ideal world" of journalism is one I never knew, but the existence of journalists (including photographers) who had friends who had liming friends, and who kept in touch, for being just curious or "farse," is within living memory.
Curiosity is a vanishing condition, as the cutting-edge of journalism dulls and dulls.
Of course, of course, "the culture is not to disclose," but T&T journalism is either a counter-culture exercise or it's nothing.
That is not to oppose absolutes, but to look out for and to salute and encouraging even uniformed, untutored, and naive poking around, which is still inspired by some (vague) sense that this is what we're supposed to be doing.

Jumping in very late in the game and at the risk of getting the "verbal beat down" my heart broke a little when I heard the news. Gone was Prime Minister, gone was leader and there appeared in my mind's eye seriously ill person. Having crossed the age of 40 one on my personal fears in Cancer, malignant tumor or otherwise.

Having known people who have lived (for a very short time after diagnosis) with Stage IV cancer, my heart goes out to PM Manning I would much rather face the opposition, the media, an irate Me than deal with the battle he is about to face.

Sorry I went in a totally diffferent direction but felt to express, since noone else around me has raised the issue, too busy Christmas shopping and cleaning I guess...Alas.

Judette, hope you don't mind me crashing this exchange of views but I tend to agree with most of your observations. What I found interesting is that by the media's own assessment this was the top story the following day. What journalist unwittingly did was predetermine how long the story should run. Apart from the human interest aspect, there is historical relevance to the nation. God forbid any thing should happen but I think it was a missed moment which would leave our history books incomplete void of the humanity of one of our nation's leaders.

It's often argued that the media only reflect society and the issues of the day when it reports the news. My question then is how come journalists could not respond? I agree that journalist should be prepared with questions they want to have answered, but they also need to be responsive to their environment. The PC scenario begs the question is the media reporting the news or creating the news?

Hi Judette,
perhaps it was a bad moment for journalism...but I am not sure that I agree with you about seeing more of the Prime Minister's humane side. All of the Manning's behaviour involves a sub-text that shows us only too well what sort of a human/e being he is. What I would like to know is how much is his "cancer" going to cost us. As far as I am concerned Manning is already a costly enough tumour to our society, are we going to have to pay for him to get rid of his?

But you do raise a salient point about the nature of the journalism/journalists that we have here. There are so many questions that could have been asked, I am not sure that PM as PM would have answered them thought. But still once in a while it would be refreshing to see our journalists show a little instinct for scent of blood, pick up trail and actually follow it.

I admit that I no longer look at these issues from a strict journalistic perspective haven gotten out of media so long ago (and not having stayed in it long myself) but Manning isn't new to politics. Not new at all. He ahs moved from being a virtually unknown MP to leading the PNM. Considering all the time that he has been in politics I feel quite certain that he would have by now at least learnt how to show his many facets, if indeed he is multi-faceted. However what he has shown to the people of this country on numberous occasions is arrogance and condescension. The inability for journalists to grasp and seize that moment of questioning recently I beleive resides in the fact that for the most part many of them are underprepared to ask the really important questions and to probe issues properly. Just look at how stories are reported and (not) followed up on any given day. Look to at how many angles are never pursued in the average story.

recently I had a discussion with friends on the number of arrests in relation to the number of murders. An angle that I have not seen the media take (and I admit I may have missed that day's paper) is the fact that many of these murders are revenge killings and sometimes the trail for an arrest ends in realising that the murderer has already been murdered. An indepth story on Vigilante Justice in Trinidad is necessary. But where's the journalist to do it.

But back to my bone of contention. Manning maybe human but he is certainly not humane, and I for one am happy that I didn't have to read a story about "Poor Mr Manning having to cope with cancer". Because I visit hospitals in trinidad far too often for my own good and I see what happens there to people who can't afford private health care (in a country that practically swimming in oil dollars).

..but the point you raise about journalism and their preparedness....that's a real issue...because if they aren't asking the right questions then a lot of people won't really know what the real issues are...

I disagree with you Judy. Whether Manning is a PM or a pauper, the questions were not asked. Manning being a politician is not relevant. If anyone else had made the announcement, I would expect journalists to ask the same questions but tailored to the office (or lack thereof) of the individual.
Kim

Laura,
It's not like Cuba is far away for heaven's sake. ANd what does resting comfortably mean? Is he back on blood thinners. Were there any complications? Why are we waiting on these banal announcements from his office? I am not sure we will ever get it right.

Could you imagine the viewers, readers a TV station, newspaper would have gotten had they sent a team. Instead everyone is carrying more of the same.

Do we really believe that a Trini PM in a foreign hospital would give permission to his doctors to talk to the media? Which of his (or any other sick local politician's) local doctors have we ever been allowed to hear from? When has he ever mentioned his own health before except to say he's feeling great? I suspect we've all been watching too much American TV.
As for the comments about reporters trailing the PM, liming in his rumshops etc (NOT to cover a more "humane" (!!!) side or any such thing, but to get more & better stories)--maybe it could have happened 30, 40 yrs ago, but times have changed. The average reporter today is probably a 27-yr-old single mother who can't take that time & those chances. I'm not saying that's necessarily good, just that that's how things are & if we want them to be different we have to make them different.
The lack of time that reporters have to do that kind of thing, or to follow the PM to Cuba, or to report from an informed position & in depth on the state of his health, are partly consequences of the expansion of the media, which has led media houses to try to stay competitive by cutting costs, ie staff with qualifications, knowledge, aptitude, experience who have to be paid more than teenagers with A-levels & nothing else; they reduce numbers; & when do they send anyone anywhere except on free trips? Media managers are managers, not media people.

Journalists have always needed permission to get certain kinds of info. It's unethical and professionally risky for doctors to discuss a particular patient's health w/out his or her consent, & the PM sure ent giving it. Nor would he talk to any journo who managed to sneak past his security detail. It might be possible to steal a photo or two but that's about all. Who else is there to get that kind of info from?
Not that media houses shdn't have sent reporters to Cuba to see what they cd get against those odds. But they didn't. Because that would cost money

The Newdsay sent someone to Cuba. Saw it today when I was going through some issues from this week, so my apologies to the Newsday, at least someone put journalism before cost eh. And it seems Andre Baggoo, the reporter who went, has been able to talk to a doctor or two. Maybe I need to start reading Newsday some more.

OK. I'm REALLY late in the game...

To be fair, foreign journos and Trinidadian journos operate in different news environments. In the U.S. there is, in general, an acknowledgment of the public's right to know and the journalist's right to ask. Officials make (begrudging?) concessions through open government, public information officers who actually do their jobs, public record request compliance etc. If they don't, there's a public consequence--one far more feared than in Trinidad. Could it be that the pause came about because local journos simply weren't sure what was appropriate in the situation and what they could face censure for?