GIVEN the grave threat revealed by events which unfolded last Wednesday at Canterbury, much of the subsequent discussion in the media — and wherever Jamaicans gathered for work, worship or recreation — focused on the capacity of the state to control all of the national territory and provide security for all its citizens.

Coming after Tivoli Gardens (twice), Mountain View Avenue, and Park Lane/100 Lane, Canterbury represented, for the Observer (editorial Friday, Oct 17) the “latest manifestation” of “armed threats from lawless elements who, if unchecked, will emerge into true insurgents”.

If Jamaica is “unable to confront and defeat this threat, it runs the risk of becoming a failed state, overrun by warlords” providing their own system of ‘law and justice’ in communities they control.

There was no shortage of suggestions from pundits and the public alike: Get outside help. Maintain security operations as long as it takes to flush out the guns and the bad men. Call a social summit. Have an inquiry. And on, and on.

The press, meanwhile, was not only reporting the story but was part of the story. Talking with Superintendent Newton Amos on the Breakfast Club (Hot 102), Friday morning co-host Anthony Abrahams asked him to comment on “suggestions by some commentators” that the shoot-out between police and gunmen in the Canterbury squatter settlement was “a charade” to justify a state of emergency.

The St James police chief first described the comment as “unpatriotic” then dismissed it as “ridiculous nonsense”. (Amos subsequently agreed with Abrahams that one could be free to talk nonsense without being unpatriotic.)

The reference to ‘some commentators’ was a thinly disguised identification of Wilmot Perkins, who was expressing disbelief of police and media reports of a nine-hour gunbattle in the depressed community where some 4,000 people are crammed into a few hundred square feet, with a single mailing address known as 12 Upper King Street.

Perkins cast doubt on a report about people with high-powered rifles climbing up in trees when, he said, there were no television pictures to prove it. He would like a ballistic expert to say whether the sound of gunfire heard on the Breakfast Club was coming from the police or the gunmen. And he disputed that the police could have been “pinned down” and yet able to take their wounded colleagues to hospital.

As reported in the Observer (last Thursday), security forces were engaged in a “day-long firefight with gunmen in which three of the hardcases were killed and three cops shot and injured”. Add details, background and context. End of story.

As noted in a Gleaner editorial (Saturday), coverage of this story was different from some previous incidents which generated a great deal of controversy. “For one, media coverage, print and electronic, came close to the ’embedded’ manoeuvres of war correspondents in the recent Iraqi invasion. This established that the day-long confrontation between the security forces was no ‘alleged shoot-out’.”

A few quotes from the Observer lead story last Thursday indicated some pluses from being ’embedded’. After describing the events of early morning, including the “rat tat tat bursts of heavy-calibre weapon fire” drowning out the voice of a police spokesman speaking ‘live’ on the Breakfast Club, the report continues: “At about 10′ clock the calm, or quiet, ended. More bursts of gunfire from the Canterbury hillside and deep in the community.

“Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. A bar at Upper King Street, in an area close to Canterbury, appeared to be the deliberate target. Reporters and police got flat. They stayed on the floor for more than 10 minutes as gunshots ricocheted off the building.”

The report goes on to say that shortly after 3:00 pm, with now some 300 security personnel in the area, “There was a new round of gunfire. Heavy barrages coming from either side.”

Underlying the controversy is a long-standing debate about where to draw the line between journalistic scepticism, a healthy value which enjoins journalists to take what they hear from any news source with a ‘grain of salt’ and cynicism which ridicules anyone and any institution with which you disagree.

The journalist should always maintain some degree of scepticism as the information source may very well have an angle that was not in the public interest. Why am I being given this exclusive piece of information? Why is the parish councillor planning a ‘spontaneous’ demonstration today over a piece of road that has not been fixed in 10 years? Why did this ‘confidential’ document just fall into my lap?

While journalists will universally embrace scepticism as a value, a major problem for the public is that those of us who write often insist on being sceptical of persons and causes we do not like but accept, at face value, statements from those who share our world view.

So, how can the public know when our questions and doubts are inspired by a healthy scepticism in the search for truth or when they just reflect our bias?

It is not easy but I would like to share some suggestions from Australia where there is an energetic debate over press coverage of that country’s support for the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Much of the charge is led by Richard Alston, federal communications minister, who has alleged that much of the coverage is anti-American bias while the press say it was really nothing more than healthy journalistic scepticism of the reasons for the war and its cost in human and material terms.

Gerald Stone (Melbourne Age, June 4) tries to clarify the issue. First of all, there’s a big difference, however, between sceptic and septic: The “toxic sneer that infects some reports to the point where an audience can no longer separate fact from prejudicial innuendo”.

In broadcast media bias is often reflected in “smug and gratuitous comments” that can be “blatant enough to bring the programme’s impartiality into question”.

I would add that it is also reflected in the use of dismissive laughter. Also, in our Jamaican context, opponents can be put down by a talk-show host accurately repeating his use of well-known Jamaican mispronunciations like ‘ voylence’, ‘cerfiticate’ or ‘tatics’.

Audiences, says Stone, should pay attention to tone of voice, inflection or facial expression; all of which can be “crucial in determining the degree of bias within the electronic media”.

Also pay attention for reports of disaster and tragedy in ways that are “lacking any sense of humanity”. Real people — men, women and children — suffered in Canterbury. Many will be traumatised by the experience, whether they were shooting, being shot at, or cowering under their beds while the skies opened up above them.

Stone suggests some techniques to detect biased reporting, which, I agree, is notoriously hard to prove. There are some warning signs that the listener or viewer may be able to spot:

* Beware of any report that begins with a value judgement before the fact: “The Government suffered a major setback today when the prime minister announced . . .”;

* Beware of inference-packed words such as “admitted”, “conceded”, “claimed”, when “said” is sufficient;

* Beware of the use of “but” to link a positive development with a less favourable one that invariably seems to cast doubt on the former. For example, an announcement of a drop in unemployment followed by the spoiler: “But unions warn of unrest, etc”;

* Most of all, beware of coverage that continually takes a given fact and immediately overshadows it by raising concerns about where it might lead. “The dollar closed at 60.05:1 today but there’s no telling where it might reach.”

Claude Robinson is Senior Fellow in the Research and Policy Group, Mona School of Business at UWI. E-mail: kcr@cwjamaica.com