In a 799-word let­ter to the ed­i­tor pub­lished as a com­men­tary in the T&T Guardian of last Fri­day, Trade Min­is­ter Mar­i­ano Browne took is­sue with this news­pa­per's ed­i­to­r­i­al of Mon­day, Au­gust 17, which was head­lined "Will he­li­copter bil­lions be well spent?"

Min­is­ter Browne's com­men­tary con­tained sev­er­al fac­tu­al er­rors which were point­ed out in an ed­i­tor's note which was pre­sent­ed be­low the min­is­ter's com­ment. The ed­i­tor's note al­so con­tained some es­ti­mates of the cost of train­ing he­li­copter pi­lots based on in­dus­try Web sites and in­ter­views with lo­cal pi­lots. The re­ac­tion by the on­line com­mu­ni­ty to the min­is­ter's com­ment and the ed­i­tor's note was over­whelm­ing and, as the first in a new se­ries of read­ers' feed­back in the Guardian, we pub­lish some of those com­ments:

Well done both of you!

It's good to see min­is­ters seek­ing to clar­i­fy re­ports. It's even bet­ter to see ed­i­tors will­ing to chal­lenge the min­is­ters' er­rors. And both sides do­ing so in a re­spect­ful man­ner. Keep this up, please. En­cour­age re­porters to do on-the-spot chal­leng­ing, eg when a Min­is­ter of Sports claims that the weath­er and traf­fic de­layed de­liv­ery of foot­ball tick­ets in the fu­ture, let your re­porter be con­fi­dent enough to say: "Please, Mr Min­is­ter, if this is re­port­ed in to­mor­row's pa­per as your sole ex­cuse, the na­tion would nev­er ac­cept it and their trust in you would be se­vere­ly dam­aged. What re­al­ly hap­pened?"

ed­mundgall

I am in shock, the ed­i­tor say­ing that al­most every­thing the min­is­ter says is not true and pro­vid­ing facts to back it up. Well no won­der the PM says that the me­dia are against his gov­ern­ment. Care­ful some­body end up like Kevin Baldeosingh.

obeah­woman

It's very cred­itable of the Guardian to be so gen­tle with the min­is­ter.

Jumbie's Watch

Well done, Guardian. I hope this lev­el of re­port­ing will now be­come the norm.

Don S

Great jour­nal­ism. Keep it up. We need a lot more of this. Fan­tas­tic.

kentshep

The Guardian has re­stored a bit of my faith with this well in­ves­ti­gat­ed re­sponse and bal­anced bit of re­port­ing. Some­thing I felt was lack­ing through­out the me­dia in re­cent years. What­ev­er the Guardian is do­ing dif­fer­ent­ly now, please keep it up.

Su­per­tri­ni

With that amount of mon­ey, we could build a brand new hos­pi­tal in cen­tral for all the pop­u­la­tion. These 'copters are for a great es­cape plan out of T&T af­ter they to­tal­ly mess it up with crimes, debt, tox­ic in­dus­tries, stolen all the land from the peo­ple, de­stroyed the man­groves, turned every bit of land in­to steel com­plex­es, and made a right ole ca­jhjoo out of T&T. And where is the op­po­si­tion par­ty ask­ing ques­tions? We the pub­lic are the op­po­si­tion par­ty and thanks to the Guardian for speak­ing up and for this site.

Desmond Smith

By this ab­solute­ly bril­liant piece of in­ves­tiga­tive re­port­ing the Guardian has ab­solute­ly reaf­firmed my faith in the abil­i­ty of the T&T press to do its job and do it well with­out favouritism or fear. If this con­tin­ues I will be most hap­py to re­tire my de­scrip­tion of the Tri­ni press as do­ing noth­ing but "gath­er­ing news mac­coious­ly and re­port­ing it in a bac­cha­na­lian way." Politi­cians must no longer be able to sim­ple spout dri­v­el and have it re­port­ed as facts un­chal­lenged. You have done as ex­cel­lent job find­ing the huge holes in Min­is­ter Browne's state­ments and have dri­ven trac­tor trail­ers side­ways through those holes. The is­sues sur­round­ing the train­ing of the 100 plus pi­lots and the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with them I find of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est so I ea­ger­ly await the min­ster's re­sponse. While one in­stance does not a trend make I still say well done Guardian. Present the news, ask the ques­tions, chal­lenge dri­v­el and let the peo­ple de­cide.

Fen­sic

The cit­i­zens of this for­mer par­adise need more and more re­port­ing like this. Take on the Gov­ern­ment, it is your right, our right. Keep up the great work.

Her­man C

Well done Guardian, well done Mr Browne... this is progress. Let's keep the mo­men­tum.

mar­copo­lo

Wow! Guardian did some re­search! I'm im­pressed! I guess they got In­ter­net con­nec­tions back up. I love the foot­note: "Ed­i­tor's Note: We wel­come all re­spons­es to our ed­i­to­ri­als but think it nec­es­sary to cor­rect ob­vi­ous er­rors made by cor­re­spon­dents, es­pe­cial­ly when those cor­re­spon­dents are min­is­ters of gov­ern­ment whose re­leas­es are of­ten treat­ed as be­ing fac­tu­al."

Why does Brown con­stant­ly try to force the pur­chase of these he­li­copters down our throats? Stop try­ing to con­stant­ly jus­ti­fy an­oth­er use­less en­deav­our. What do you care of the pub­lic's opin­ion on the mat­ter? Would you can­cel the or­der if we tell you we think this pur­chase is use­less and the mon­ey can be used for some­thing bet­ter?

kit­ty south

I com­mend the ed­i­tor of the Guardian for tak­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to check all the facts pre­sent­ed by Mr Browne and lay out its find­ings for the read­ers to make their own judg­ment. Min­is­ter Browne's facts were re­searched and four er­rors were found and the find­ings pre­sent­ed fol­low­ing his let­ter. Our me­dia have been crit­i­cised se­vere­ly by this Gov­ern­ment which claims that they are an­ti-gov­ern­ment, and that they "do not ed­u­cate the peo­ple." Mr Man­ning claims that he had to go on a tour of the coun­try to "ed­u­cate" the peo­ple him­self, star­ing from Wood­ford Square. Is this not ed­u­ca­tion from the me­dia, Mr Man­ning, and those who crit­i­cise? The Guardian was pro­fes­sion­al in pro­vid­ing the facts, and not let­ting opin­ions en­ter in­to its re­search.

I rec­om­mend this com­men­tary in the Guardian and ask read­ers to read it care­ful­ly and judge.

Gar­de­nia

The es­ti­mat­ed he­li­copter train­ing costs post­ed by the ed­i­tor are gross­ly un­der­es­ti­mat­ed and most like­ly re­fer to ba­sic civil­ian he­li­copter train­ing. The av­er­age cost to train a US Army Black­hawk (UH-60) he­li­copter pi­lot is US$265,236 us­ing the army's flight school XXI pro­gram. Train­ing can run any­where from 34 to 42 weeks and com­pris­es: Al­though we are pur­chas­ing a small­er air­craft, its role and con­fig­u­ra­tion op­tions are sim­i­lar to the Black­hawk. So based on the to­tal num­ber of per­son­nel (136) to be trained (pi­lots, sup­port staff) on the he­li­copters and the du­ra­tion of train­ing sup­port (un­til 2015), the pric­ing quot­ed by the min­is­ter seems plau­si­ble.

Guardian9999

Great in­ves­tiga­tive re­port­ing. Guardian, hats off to you. I write of­ten that the me­dia do not in­ves­ti­gate nor ed­u­cate the pub­lic in top­ics of the day. Some­thing good is go­ing on in your board­room, your strat­e­gy is great. It's time we stand up to the spin and show that we can­not fool the peo­ple as we can find out the truth. Thank you Guardian, you are my hero and when dengue re­turns let's smash the spin al­so.

Desmond Smith

Judg­ing from his­to­ry our po­lice force is re­al­ly a farce: crim­i­nals roam the streets while law-abid­ing peo­ple lock them­selves up be­hind bar­ri­cades of steel. What makes Min­is­ter Browne think that this new crime fight­ing/de­ter­rent unit will be dif­fer­ent from our po­lice force?

Rik Hansel

I have read with in­ter­est your ex­pos� on Sen­a­tor Mar­i­ano Browne's min­is­te­r­i­al state­ment to this me­dia house pub­lished on Au­gust 21, cap­tioned "Facts about pur­chase of he­li­copters." And while I am tempt­ed to join the com­men­tary on this im­por­tant na­tion­al is­sue, I must ad­mit it is a bit chal­leng­ing even for the un­der­signed to posit any new per­spec­tives on this par­tic­u­lar mat­ter giv­en the ob­vi­ous er­rors that have been un­masked by your jour­nal­is­tic prowess and the in­sight­ful com­ments of your very dis­cern­ing read­ers. Nonethe­less, I am in­deed in­trigued by this very ex­ten­sive but by no means ex­haus­tive con­ver­sa­tion. I ad­mire your tenac­i­ty in the pur­suit of truth and ac­cu­ra­cy. Your at­ten­tion to de­tail is al­so re­fresh­ing. Clear­ly, this piece is avant-garde and a cred­it to your pro­fes­sion as it tru­ly un­der­scores the mean­ing of the time­less max­im "fair and bal­anced." Keep up the good work as I look for­ward anx­ious­ly to the min­is­ter's re­sponse.

Pe­ter Per­me­ll