Did narrow self-interest trump good journalism in Gleaner report?
THE Gleaner court reporter must have felt embarrassed and queasy as he appeared in the Half-Way-Tree Magistrate’s Court yesterday to face lawyers from both the prosecution and the defence, in the ATL Pension Fund fraud case now underway.
Both sides privately commended the Observer reporter Paul Henry for a fair, balanced and comprehensive report on Tuesday’s sitting at which testimony was heard from Auditor Carolyn Bell-Wisdom, a senior manager at accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. Henry’s report gave a full treatment to the five hours of testimony by Bell-Wisdom.
But for its part, the Gleaner report ignored the greater part of the testimony and restricted itself to a minor point in the cross-examination of the auditor by attorney Frank Phipps, QC and dealing with ATL chairman, Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart. Readers were therefore deprived of a clear understanding from that story of what the auditor’s testimony was about, and risked drawing an erroneous conclusion because of what was omitted.
“One must not simply ascribe blame to the reporter, until it is known whether that was all he wrote or whether his report was tampered with, in order to sensationalise the issue,” said one attorney who did not wish to be named for fear of earning the ire of the newspaper.
“I have known cases in which newspaper officers have overridden a fair and balanced, professionally done report in favour of promoting what turned out to be narrow self-interest. Whatever is the reason, it is shameful and makes the entire journalism profession look bad,” said the attorney who is close to the case.
Both stories published in the two newspapers yesterday are republished today to allow readers to judge for themselves:Related Articles:Billion-dollar pension fund payout not approved — auditor (Observer)
