Dear Editor,

Journalism is national security in the highest context.

It’s information and communication, it is the events of the day distilled into a few words, sounds and pictures, to satisfy the human curiosity in a world where people are always eager to know what’s new.

The first duty of the press is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of the events of time, and instantly, by disclosing them, make them common property of the nation.

It is the newspaper’s duty to print the news.

Freedom of the press is the freedom that has suffered the most from the gradual degradation of the state of liberty.

A free press is vital, but most certainly without total freedom it will be nothing but bad news.

Newspapers are archives, objects of records. They can be referred to and checked in a way which the electronic media cannot.

They can describe events at greater length, add more relevant details, give authoritative comments from people in a position to detect trends and the likely lines along which a news story will develop.

In communist countries the press is a branch of the Government. Such a press publishes the dictates of the Government.

In a democracy a journalist’s duty is to exercise his power with restraint and responsibility. It is his duty to check the facts and assess in as much depth as he can the context in which those facts exist.

The familiarity factor is most important.

In order for the journalist to get through to his readers or listeners he must lay down some guidelines to lead the public from what is familiar to what seems strange, dangerous and frightening.

The journalist is an agent of change in a society. He/she should not be comfortable in the present. Society changes, the press that does not change wakes up to find that its readers have left it behind.

Power with responsibility is the hallmark of a good journalist.

When the newspaper questions certain members of ethnic groups, the Government and Opposition, this is where conflict begins.

This usually gives way to the rights of the press to access available information being seriously challenged by the Government.

Why attack a journalist when his only weapon is a pen or the spoken word?

Naturally, this is a consequence of the ubiquitousness of news and the fact that it tells the nation so many things which we seemingly got along fine without knowing.

The danger, however, is that the media, having cried wolf so often and on so many subjects, when the wolf really descends on the nation as we see in present times they attack the journalist and not the wolf.

Donald Gayle

Tower Hill,

St Andrew

howiemac53@gmail.com