It prob­a­bly wasn’t worth the at­ten­tion we’d giv­en to it but as the say­ing goes, out of evil cometh good—like the new growth of lush fo­liage on the moun­tains af­ter de­struc­tion by fire.

If any­thing, the sham BBC pro­duc­tion en­ti­tled “The Dis­placed” didn’t rise to the realm of the de­struc­tion of any­thing—not our rep­u­ta­tion of com­pas­sion or for­eign pol­i­cy of non-in­ter­ven­tion in the af­fairs of oth­er coun­tries.

What the pro­duc­ers’ agen­da un­in­ten­tion­al­ly re­vealed was the dirty side of their skids, and how the me­dia could ex­ploit vul­ner­a­ble refugees to ad­vance some­body’s agen­da. No one should blame the Gov­ern­ment and cit­i­zens who be­lieved TheDis­placed pro­duc­tion didn’t hap­pen in a vac­u­um giv­en the mis­chief right here sur­round­ing this coun­try’s re­sponse to the Venezue­lan cri­sis and the suc­cess­ful reg­is­tra­tion of over six­teen thou­sand peo­ple seek­ing refuge here. There were those who’d op­posed the pol­i­cy of non-in­ter­ven­tion, and who’d said that the strat­e­gy of reg­is­tra­tion would have failed. They were wrong.

Typ­i­cal of hatch­et re­port­ing, the pro­duc­ers spliced in au­then­tic footage that would have de­ceived any view­er in be­liev­ing that cit­i­zens gen­er­al­ly were against the refugees, which wasn’t the case. No­tably, some of those pro­tes­tors had been seen be­fore un­der the ris­ing yel­low sun at the Par­lia­ment build­ing ex­er­cis­ing their con­sti­tu­tion­al right to protest. Why didn’t the re­porter ask them how like­ly they were to lose their jobs to the Venezue­lans giv­en the view in the very video that some peo­ple wrong­ly brand the Venezue­lans as pros­ti­tutes, aka brass-flutes in British slang and crim­i­nals! The ques­tion would have lay­ered the pro­duc­tion with some depth.

When the ve­rac­i­ty of the re­port­ing got chal­lenged, the pro­duc­ers re­sort­ed to a usu­al tac­tic, “they got no re­sponse” for re­quests for in­for­ma­tion. Such was the an­swer from the world’s old­est and largest multi­na­tion­al broad­cast­ing cor­po­ra­tion that prides it­self as the bas­tion of me­dia con­tent in­tegri­ty. In oth­er words, it’s OK to pub­lish lies rather than the truth. It was a for­gone con­clu­sion that they would have de­fend­ed work pro­duced in their name. All me­dia tend to do that even when their years of ex­pe­ri­ence qual­i­fy them to know when a piece of work is nuffink more than gob­shite. The crap still of­fend­ed many of us since it came across as a de­lib­er­ate at­tempt to slur our coun­try’s re­sponse to the Venezue­lan refugee cri­sis. Maybe we were wrong and the pro­duc­ers gen­uine­ly be­lieved the pro­duc­tion was an ac­cu­rate re­flec­tion from the per­spec­tive of the dis­placed Venezue­lans!

As the say­ing goes, good usu­al­ly comes from evil. If a Span­ish ver­sion was done, then it may have dis­cour­aged more dis­placed Venezue­lans from com­ing here.

The Dis­placed gives us here an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­flect on how for­tu­nate we are to have a coun­try we call home; to think mer­ci­ful­ly on the thou­sands of ter­rorised peo­ple of the Win­drush gen­er­a­tion whose an­ces­tors fought and died do de­fend Britain and free­dom, and are now dragged from the coun­try they’d served all their lives to places un­known to them. Think of the war vet­er­ans of the USA mil­i­tary who’d fought for its flag and called that coun­try home, on­ly to be hunt­ed and frozen in the cold by ICE.

Our coun­try has its strengths and weak­ness­es. Whether or not we like the gov­ern­ment or the Prime Min­is­ter has noth­ing to do with our oblig­a­tion to de­fend it when peo­ple throw mud at it un­fair­ly.

The Gov­ern­ment’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion team had an ex­cel­lent op­por­tu­ni­ty to im­me­di­ate­ly and con­struc­tive­ly re­spond with facts and show the com­pas­sion of our peo­ple for the Venezue­lan refugees. One can al­ways do bet­ter at any­thing, but in the sit­u­a­tion of the refugees, we have done re­mark­ably well, giv­en the over­all eco­nom­ic cli­mate, the pres­sure on scarce re­sources, and the nat­ur­al, lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al forces that are im­pact­ing our tiny is­land. The refugees here have ac­cess to pri­ma­ry health care, school­ing and coun­selling of their chil­dren by re­li­gious and oth­er vol­un­teer groups, and they can work. Are some of them fright­ened and con­cerned? Who wouldn’t be af­ter the hell they’d gone through to get here, and their sta­tus of un­cer­tain­ly? Is the sys­tem per­fect? No.

The com­mu­ni­ca­tion team should have reaf­firmed the Gov­ern­ment’s poli­cies, more so how un­fold­ing events are prov­ing the wis­dom of our po­si­tion on Venezuela and the refugee cri­sis. They should have en­cour­aged every gov­ern­ment min­istry, every per­son who felt ag­griev­ed by the nasty piece of work, to pub­li­cise the truth on their so­cial me­dia pages, the Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia pages where pos­si­ble in­clud­ing the UN­HCR, the UN and BBCs. The Gov­ern­ment shouldn’t take it for grant­ed that be­cause pol­i­cy in­for­ma­tion is in the pub­lic do­main, cit­i­zens and the wider com­mu­ni­ties are aware of it.