Dear Editor,

I often sit and ponder about our country – the senseless killings, the rape of our women and youngsters of both sexes, the reckless and intimidating driving tactics of our public tranport operators and the overall state of disorder that has slowy come to characterise our country.

I wonder how the use of the wide and all-encompasing media in all its forms could have helped to slow and even stop our slide to the precipitous state of affairs. Instead, what we have now is a media landscape, particularly the electronic media where some operators continue to deseminate a message of coarseness, boorishness, and in a majority of cases, downright slackess that continues to undermine the efforts of well-thinking Jamaicans.

When the radio and TV stations air slack and ugly chantings and rantings which they try to pass on as music to an unsuspecting younger generation, we get the kind of backlash which I mention in my opening paragraph.

Those of us who did an introductory or advanced course in psychology, or both, would doubtless be aware of the experiment conducted by Russian physiotherapist Ivan Pavlov to prove his case in asserting the phenomena of classical conditioning. It would be interesting if someone could undertake research to find out if there is a link between the constant absorption of the negative messages contained in most of the lyrics in the so-called music, the conditionig agent and the crimes and violence the effect of the exposure to the conditioning agent.

In any case, I am making a special appeal to the hundreds of people employed in the electronic industry to set the bar of responsible broadcasting much higher than currently exists and start the process of arresting the decay that you have contributed to over the years.

Winston Barrett

Kingston 8

winstonbarrett1654@gmail.com