Joel Julien

Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona took tra­di­tion­al and so­cial me­dia to task yes­ter­day as he slammed news­pa­pers for be­com­ing "garbage dumps" and lament­ed the rise of "arm­chair jour­nal­ism."

Car­mona has now called on all law-abid­ing cit­i­zens to take a stand as he de­clared that "enough is enough."

Over the past week Car­mona has been called up­on to an­swer ques­tions about the pur­chase of Ital­ian wine bot­tled with the em­bossed la­bel "Pres­i­den­tial House Sparkling Wine, Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent of Trinidad and To­ba­go" and bear­ing the coun­try's coat of arms as well as his de­ci­sion to have a meet­ing with Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon with­out ref­er­ence to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Car­mona, who has sig­nalled his in­ten­tion to ad­dress the queries to­mor­row, yes­ter­day warned those in the Mer­cy Vil­lage at the Jean Pierre Com­plex, Port-of-Spain, of the "slings and ar­rows" they will face in life.

Car­mona's ad­dress at Mer­cy Vil­lage was his first jab at the me­dia.

The Mer­cy Vil­lage which was launched yes­ter­day was or­gan­ised in the name of the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain as part of the church's cel­e­bra­tion of the Ju­bilee Year of Mer­cy.

The Mer­cy Vil­lage is aimed at en­cour­ag­ing the na­tion's youth to take a more ac­tive role in the coun­try's de­vel­op­ment.

"We must en­sure that we in fact be­come crea­tures of em­pa­thy, com­pas­sion, self­less­ness. And ser­vice to hu­man­i­ty must be our phi­los­o­phy be­cause ladies and gen­tle­men we will in fact suf­fer the slings and ar­rows of those who are hold­ing on to the Dev­il's tail and there are many in our so­ci­ety who would not coun­te­nance good when they see it, who will con­demn good when it comes knock­ing on their door, who will in fact per­vert the de­scrip­tions of what is in fact be­ing done for the good of Trinidad and To­ba­go and this hap­pens through­out the world," Car­mona said.

"That is why ladies and gen­tle­men, young men and women we have to evan­ge­lise on a dif­fer­ent lev­el, we have to tell the news­pa­pers and so­cial me­dia and all of them that enough is enough. We have to tell the CEOs (Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cers) and the man­ag­ing di­rec­tors and the ed­i­tors of news­pa­pers that in fact your news­pa­per is not a garbage dump be­cause I re­mem­ber, I re­mem­ber ladies and gen­tle­men when in fact I saw an ar­ti­cle where they re­ferred that there are in this world two St Thomas 'Aquinass­es' and my re­li­gion was mocked, my Chris­tian­i­ty was mocked and I felt in the cir­cum­stances that will not de­ter me from in­vok­ing the pow­er of God in pub­lic places and we must not be afraid of our re­li­gion, we must not in fact con­cede to those who are non-be­liev­ers to those who are ag­nos­tics, to those who are doubt­ing Thomases be­cause you know what ladies and gen­tle­men, boys and girls, we be­lieve in the pow­er of God, we be­lieve that in fact there is a God that will bring mir­a­cles to this land of ours," he said.

In his Re­pub­lic Day ad­dress to the na­tion Car­mona con­tin­ued his crit­i­cism of the me­dia as he slammed those who en­gage in "arm­chair jour­nal­ism."

Car­mona said "moral au­thor­i­ty" is di­min­ish­ing in this coun­try.

"On this Re­pub­lic Day, I ask you cit­i­zens to re­mem­ber some of the great jour­nal­ists and tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ties of the past. To name a few, George John, John Babb, Therese Mills, Hazel Ward, Hol­ly Be­taudi­er and Owen Bap­tiste. They con­tin­ue to be my stan­dard and I feel they must be­come our stan­dard. Their stew­ard­ship was marked by ci­vil­i­ty, pro­bity, comi­ty, sim­ple good man­ners and de­cen­cy. There is sim­ply too much jour­nal­is­tic over­reach go­ing on to­day," Car­mona said.

"There are some jour­nal­ists, and I re­peat some, who den­i­grate with­out ev­i­den­tial ba­sis en­gaged in arm­chair jour­nal­ism who hear some­thing by the way and it be­comes re­li­able news. There are per­sons in re­al­i­ty me­dia, who are bad ex­am­ples for our chil­dren and the youth of this na­tion," he said.

"De­cent, law-abid­ing cit­i­zens must take a stance be­cause it ap­pears that of­fen­sive is in and de­cen­cy is out. Theirs has be­come the lan­guage of ob­scen­i­ty and racial slurs–yes, that small cir­cle that is lead­ing the na­tion­al di­a­logue, you are not the voice of the peo­ple be­cause you have un­fet­tered and un­fair ac­cess to the press and me­dia, be­cause you have cre­at­ed vlogs and videos that re­ly for view­er­ship and fol­low­ers, not on prop­er and re­spon­si­ble re­search and wis­dom, but on dis­tor­tions and sen­sa­tion­al­ism. Fair­ness, re­spect and in­ter­na­tion­al knowl­edge are still very much in and will al­ways be the stan­dard and foun­da­tion of a pro­gres­sive so­ci­ety," Car­mona said.