Congratulations are due to Nationwide News Network (NNN) on the celebration of its 20th birthday this year. This is a well-deserved celebration. It is not easy for any new business to survive, let alone a media company in the competitive space of the Jamaican media environment. This has become even more so with the advent of the Internet and the challenge of social media, which have rendered the survival of traditional media almost impossible.

But through the years NNN has carved out its own niche, and today has become one of the most vibrant and listened to media outfits in Jamaica. In my view, as one who has followed the work of NNN over the years, there are certain defining features which have led to this accomplishment.

First and foremost is the sagacity and tenacity of its founder, Cliff Hughes. Sometimes the lost hours, the level of anxiety, and the hard work that go into the building of a young company is not appreciated. It is no different from a parent who loves his or her child and wants them to grow into the best of what they are capable. Parenting might be a more gradual process, embracing a wider and longer horizon than founding and growing a fledgling business, but the anxieties of wanting and doing the best for your “child” persists. It is the persistence and tenacity of Hughes, undoubtedly against great odds, that has kept the ship steady in the turbulent years of his young company’s growth to maturity.

Second, Hughes has been very successful in seeing and hiring good talent to NNN. The work of his employees in the wider society testifies to this. NNN is not just an incubator for good journalistic talent, but an incubator of communication skills among young people who have gone on to other communication endeavours in the society, proving themselves worthy of the confidence that NNN reposed in them.

Third, and I believe most important, is the trust and confidence that the Jamaican people and an ever-wider international audience (thanks to social media) has placed in the company over the years. This trust and confidence are the mother’s milk for the survival of any media outfit. Without this they wither on the vine of irrelevance. As a new outfit, NNN may have stumbled in the early years. But it learnt its lessons, picked itself up, brushed off the dirt from its clothes of perceived ignorance, and continued on the path forward.

There is one cardinal principle for the sustainability of confidence in a media outfit. This is the openness and willingness to admit when you are wrong, make the necessary corrections, and endeavour to move in a new direction. There are outfits who take this principle for granted and who in their ignorance and arrogance continue as if they have done nothing wrong. But there is nothing to earn the ire of the public than this.

The hallmark of NNN’s tenacity, as I have observed it over the years, is its ability to quickly admit wrong, apologise, and try to move forward. I believe this more than anything else has given them credibility in the eyes of the Jamaican people. And people can be very forgiving if you do wrong and admit it without any water in your mouth. They can see genuineness very readily and reward it. Ingenuity, insincerity, lies, inuendoes, and fakeness they regard as chaff to be bundled up and placed in the fire!

I congratulate NNN to also make a wider point about the work that journalists do. There is no doubt that we are living at a time when the press worldwide is under severe strain. Worldwide, the term “free press” is not one to be taken for granted or readily assumed. As the post-truth culture takes hold over the minds of many, the work of journalists as purveyors of the truth and interrogators of falsehood can only grow. This is particularly so in a world that is increasingly bending its knees to right-wing authoritarianism and the narrative that opinions are facts. It will take more than bravery to stand up against and resist this trend.

Let me say something about bravery. Bravery is rushing into a burning building and saving a child’s life. It is confronting someone who is in the process of harming someone else and wresting the knife or gun from the attacker, not reckoning with whether you might be hurt or even killed in the process. If you stand up for and seek to uphold a set of principles to which you subscribe, then this is not being brave. You may be ridiculed and set upon for believing them, but your steadfast fidelity to them is what sustains you and define you for who you are. There is nothing particularly brave about this.

If you will pardon a personal aside, over the almost 50 years that I have written columns in national newspapers or otherwise offered my opinion on matters to the public, there have been detractors who have opposed my opinions, especially my political commentaries. Like others of my ilk, I do not always like the epithets that are sometimes thrown my way, especially when people tell me that as a priest I should leave politics alone (I am sanitising the comments here). In the heat of the gladiatorial political contests of the 80s and 90s, I was advised to use a nom de plume. But I never did and would cease writing altogether if I had to hide behind a nickname.

I believe in my right to offer my opinions with decorum and delicacy, whether or not people agree or disagree with them. Is this bravery? No! It is fidelity to the principles you hold dear which should be respected by others as you would and should respect those of other people. In any society people should be free to express their opinions without fear. It is not bravery when you do so but a subscription to a deeper and even sacred set of principles in which you truly believe.

Dr Raulston Nembhard is a priest, social commentator, and author of the books Finding Peace in the Midst of Life’s Storms; The Self-esteem Guide to a Better Life; and Beyond Petulance: Republican Politics and the Future of America. He hosts a podcast — Mango Tree Dialogues — on his YouTube channel. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or stead6655@aol.com.