Yvonne Ba­boolal

WIN Tv fires jour­nal­ist for Face­book rant

Jour­nal­ist Dar­ryl Heer­alal was fired yes­ter­day as a free­lance tele­vi­sion re­porter by WIN Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, af­ter he post­ed state­ments deemed racial­ly of­fen­sive on Face­book on Sun­day.

Af­ter be­ing fired, Heer­alal put an­oth­er post­ing on Face­book yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, this time an apol­o­gy. He apol­o­gised for his "vile words, racist state­ments" and "lack of hu­man­i­ty."Sunil Ramdeen, WIN's gen­er­al man­ag­er, con­firmed Heer­alal's free­lance con­tract with the com­pa­ny had been end­ed with im­me­di­ate ef­fect af­ter a dis­cus­sion with him yes­ter­day.

He said: "Com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives talked with Heer­alal and af­ter those dis­cus­sions we will like to in­form the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty he will no longer be af­fil­i­at­ed with WIN Com­mu­ni­ca­tions in any ca­pac­i­ty."We be­lieve in equal­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion by the me­dia for all our cit­i­zens, wher­ev­er they may be, from Ce­dros to the Beetham and Sea Lots."

A Queen's Roy­al Col­lege old boy and a res­i­dent of Ch­agua­nas, Heer­alal raised a hor­net's nest and in­curred the wrath of many of his Face­book friends and oth­er read­ers when he re­ferred to Sea Lots res­i­dents us­ing the de­grad­ing n-word sev­er­al times. Heer­alal al­so threw in a com­ment about some East In­di­ans, re­fer­ring to "stosh (sic) c---ies" and com­par­ing them to "ran­cid co­conut oil."

He was com­ment­ing on an­gry protests by Sea Lots res­i­dents on Sun­day af­ter six of their neigh­bours were hit by a speed­ing car dri­ven by a po­lice of­fi­cer.Haydee Paul, 28, and her daugh­ters Ruthie, eight, and Shaki­ra, sev­en, re­turn­ing home from the near­by Cen­tral Mar­ket, died on the spot. Res­i­dents blocked the high­way and were in­volved in clash­es with the po­lice, who used tear gas and rub­ber bul­lets to sub­due them.

Ramdeen said in an ear­li­er state­ment that WIN con­demned "in the strongest pos­si­ble way" Heer­alal's state­ments, which in no way re­flect­ed the views of the com­pa­ny, which was shocked, tak­en aback and re­pulsed by Heer­alal's com­ments.He said the me­dia were charged with a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to rep­re­sent the views of all the peo­ple.

He added: "That re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is even deep­er in coun­tries such as T&T, which com­pris­es a mix­ture of eth­nic as well as so­cial groups. Even more than politi­cians, the me­dia in T&T must guard jeal­ous­ly the fun­da­men­tal val­ues that al­low us to tran­scend racism and di­vi­sive­ness and cham­pi­on the cause of to­geth­er­ness and na­tion­al uni­ty.

Ramdeen, fur­ther ex­plain­ing why the com­pa­ny fired Heer­alal, told the T&T Guardian the com­pa­ny would not have been able to send some­one har­bour­ing such views to cov­er the Sea Lots sto­ry.

What Heer­alal wrote:

Be­cause "woman and chil­dren get bounce and dead," the peo­ple from Sea Lots "de­cide to ri­ot...and then the gov­ern­ment will have to give them hand­outs..."The "rest of the hard-work­ing law-abid­ing Africans and In­di­ans" would con­tin­ue to live in fear," he said, sug­gest­ing the rest of the pop­u­la­tion should arm them­selves and shoot the ri­ot­ers in the head.

Heer­alal's apol­o­gy yes­ter­day

"On Sun­day Feb­ru­ary 24 I made com­ments about the un­for­tu­nate and hor­rif­ic ac­ci­dent at Sea Lots which took the lives of two chil­dren, their moth­er, a fourth woman and in­jured two oth­ers.

"My state­ments can on­ly be de­scribed as racist, in­sen­si­tive, un­for­tu­nate, un­car­ing and crass. And for it I apol­o­gise un­re­served­ly, first­ly to the peo­ple of Sea Lots, Beetham Gar­dens, Laven­tille, Mal­oney and al­so to all those whom I of­fend­ed by my racist and in­ap­pro­pri­ate state­ments.

"I al­so wish to apol­o­gise to my friends, many of whom are of African her­itage, and es­pe­cial­ly to my for­mer wife and daugh­ter, both of whom share an African her­itage."In post­ing my com­ments I had sought to draw at­ten­tion to crime, ur­ban pover­ty and fear in the so­ci­ety. How­ev­er, I def­i­nite­ly mis­spoke, spoke out of time and in so do­ing I have brought ir­repara­ble harm, dam­age and un­nec­es­sary pain by my vile words to those who were im­pact­ed by the ac­ci­dent in this their time of grief.

"My state­ments were par­tic­u­lar­ly un­for­tu­nate, es­pe­cial­ly com­ing in the midst of the sor­row, hurt and pain caused by the ac­ci­dent and the plight of the peo­ple of Sea Lots. "I take full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and ac­cept the full con­se­quences of my ac­tions and again apol­o­gise to all those who have been im­pact­ed by my lack of judg­ment and hu­man­i­ty."