Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

?When I was a snot-nosed school­girl I couldn't be­lieve it was le­gal for some news­pa­pers to pub­lish the con­tent they did. I wrote a bit­ter let­ter to the ed­i­tor of the Ex­press–on copy­book pa­per, and pos­si­bly in pen­cil–ask­ing these pub­li­ca­tions to cease and de­sist.

Imag­ine if they had lis­tened to me; there would have been protest lines around the block if the Punch had been shut down like I want­ed it to. It was the charm­ing and beau­ti­ful jour­nal­ist San­dra Chouthi (who has since grown on­ly more charm­ing and beau­ti­ful) who in­ter­cept­ed me in the lob­by of the old Co­coa House at the Ex­press to tell me ever so gen­tly that they wouldn't pub­lish my fiery let­ter.�News­pa­pers, she said, don't like to crit­i­cise oth­er news­pa­pers. That's why what I'm about to do is break­ing a gold­en rule. I thought the News­day's de­ci­sion to pub­lish the pic­ture of the dead ba­by, on Mon­day gone, was wrong. Dead wrong, ac­tu­al­ly. (I can't re­sist a pun, sor­ry.) Then there was the fol­low-up bad de­ci­sion to de­fend their ini­tial dis­as­trous choice in a front-page ed­i­to­r­i­al, no less. "The pho­to was meant to shock," the ed­i­to­r­i­al read. "And shock it did, judg­ing by the let­ters and tele­phone calls we re­ceived ac­cus­ing us of in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty, lack of hu­man de­cen­cy, dis­grace­ful and such like com­ments.

"Like read­ers we were pained to see this pho­to­graph of a one-year-old beau­ti­ful doll-like child ly­ing dead in a patch of grass. But we de­lib­er­ate­ly, and af­ter much thought, pub­lished the pho­to in the hope, which we hope will not be in vain, to sen­si­tise peo­ple about the es­ca­lat­ing car­nage on our roads." An ed­i­to­r­i­al on ve­hic­u­lar ac­ci­dents and road car­nage is sure­ly not out of line. But when it points fin­gers at the griev­ing fam­i­ly, and even the dead moth­er of the dead child, who failed to prop­er­ly se­cure the in­fant, sure­ly, that has crossed a line. I have a ques­tion for the au­thor of the ed­i­to­r­i­al. It cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly states, "Speed­ing or in­tox­i­cat­ed dri­vers are re­spon­si­ble" for the deaths of peo­ple in mo­tor ve­hi­cle ac­ci­dents. I do not wish to im­ply that in­tox­i­ca­tion and ex­ces­sive speed are not the caus­es of some fa­tal mo­tor ve­hi­cle crash­es. But are you cer­tain that those are the on­ly two rea­sons for the crash­es that claim so many lives?

Tired­ness, as any dri­ver would at­test, must share some of the blame. Which of us has not drift­ed off while dri­ving one night or ear­ly morn­ing, blink­ing on­ly to find our car drift­ing too? In fact, a de­fen­sive dri­ving in­struc­tor warned me that falling asleep at the wheel, not dri­ving drunk, was the more present dan­ger. (Maybe he thought I looked too in­no­cent to drink.) One needn't be drunk to have bad judg­ment, to run a red light or a stop sign; and one needn't be speed­ing, ei­ther. There is al­so the very re­al prob­lem of our atro­cious­ly main­tained roads and high­ways. I have pre­vi­ous­ly and vo­cif­er­ous­ly lament­ed the con­di­tion of our roads, some with pot­holes so big you wish you had a tow­el and some sun­block to make best use of them. There are roads so bumpy and rough that they wrench the steer­ing wheel right out of your hands; have you ever dri­ven down the Morne Co­co Road from Le Plat­te Vil­lage? That's a good ex­am­ple of a bad ex­am­ple. Not on­ly is the road it­self steep, wind­ing and un­lit, it is bound­ed on one side by a moun­tain face and on the oth­er by a precipice.

When I first met it, my heart was in my throat as I nav­i­gat­ed the turns, es­pe­cial­ly those where the smooth road gave way to a grav­el­ly, bro­ken, pit­ted sur­face that would some­times fall away to the steep drop. I wasn't drunk and I wasn't speed­ing, and yet, by the druthers of the au­thor of that ed­i­to­r­i­al, had I met my fate on that per­ilous road I would have been blamed for my own demise. It hasn't hap­pened to me but I have heard sto­ries of brakes fail­ing. These things are not planned; my own car's per­sis­tent trans­mis­sion trou­ble used to leave me red-faced and stalled in the most in­con­ve­nient of spots. Once it hap­pened on the La­dy Young; an­oth­er time, cross­ing the Colville Street traf­fic lights. Bless God, noth­ing hap­pened. But it could have; would it have been my fault? Ac­ci­dents hap­pen. Some car crash­es are in­deed caused by drunk and high dri­vers, and by speed demons who en­joy the rush of zoom­ing down a high­way or street. But I am sure, be­yond all doubt, that these are not the on­ly caus­es of fa­tal crash­es, and it is rep­re­hen­si­ble for a news­pa­per in its ed­i­to­r­i­al space to say so.

Was there shock val­ue in putting the ba­by's pho­to on the front page?Ab­solute­ly. And I'm sure the News­day sold out on news­stands that day. But we as me­dia work­ers, jour­nal­ists, must make judg­ments weigh­ing the val­ue of such pho­tos against what is hu­man and ac­cept­able to the pub­lic. This is not the first time such poor taste has been ex­er­cised; as my ven­er­a­ble for­mer ed­i­tor Lenny Grant point­ed out to some histri­on­ic folk on Face­Book this week, some years ago there was a pic-ture of the sev­ered head of a kid­nap vic­tim on an­oth­er front page. There was pos­si­bly some re­deem­ing so­cial val­ue to that choice, too; but did it re­duce at all the grim hor­ror of see­ing that de­com­pos­ing head on the front page? I can still re­mem­ber it, years lat­er. So­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is the thing stand­ing be­tween a free press and hell it­self. With­out self-reg­u­la­tion, we can do any­thing. Any­thing. We can pub­lish any­thing we want to, once it's not li­bel­lous or un­true, or in con­tra­ven­tion of the laws of the land. But does that mean we ought to?

Self-reg­u­la­tion is not the same as self-cen­sor­ship. I am not by any means sug­gest­ing that we should make de­ci­sions to hold our hands from pub­lish­ing in­con­ve­nient truths, or un­fash­ion­able but nec­es­sary sto­ries. But we ought to be able to tell the dif­fer­ence be­tween a sen­si­ble risk and shock for the sake of shock. Per­haps News­day is right and I am wrong. It is pos­si­ble the pic­ture of Nevi Vion­na, not quite a year old, an­gel­ic and pris­tine in her romper and hood­ed blan­ket, has soft­ened the hard hearts of drunk dri­vers and speed demons from Ica­cos to To­co, all the way to Ch­aguara­mas and back to Guayagua­yare. It's not like­ly, but it's pos­si­ble.