Gay females increasing faster than males, says top psychiatrist

Garfield Wright garfield_wright@yahoo.com

Sunday, December 06, 2009

I read your article in the Sunday Observer titled "Gay females increasing faster than males, says top psychiatrist" and I felt compelled to comment on the fact that anecdotal observations made by a single person (no matter how qualified) made it to print.

The fact that the opinions of a psychiatrist was the only source of this claim also gives the impression that a psychiatrist is the primary source of information on lesbian and homosexual matters and by extension suggests that homosexuality is a mental illness. I have to say I was quite surprised that this article survived reasonable criticism to make it to print.

I'm not a journalist, nor am I an advocate for any particular slant of sexual preference, but as a reader of the Observer I was expecting a more balanced article sourcing multiple qualified sources (maybe Amnesty International or whatever gay and lesbian organisations/support groups there are in Jamaica) and, at the very least, some attempt at checking the claims made by this single person.

I'm sorry but to me Dr Aggrey Irons' opinions on homosexuality and certainly homosexuality statistics in Jamaica is no more qualified than if you had picked someone at random at Half-Way-Tree and asked their opinion and then printed it as fact - it's pure hearsay.

As the Observer is my primary source of information for news in Jamaica I have an expectation that what I read is factual and objectively presented information and from time to time I even ignore the common typing errors that slip through sub-editing, but this article failed all my expectations of proper journalism and for this to make it to the world stage via the Internet conveys a bad message about journalism in Jamaica but also presents the opinions of a single person as statistics in Jamaica.

I can't tell you what to print in your paper but as I reader I felt compelled to tell you I was (un)impressed by this bit of journalism - if this were an opinion piece I wouldn't have said a word but this was in the news section, presented as factual news. I know the Observer can do better than that.