Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves called out the media over aspects of news coverage, in remarks at the recently-ended Caribbean Community (CARICOM) crime symposium in Trinidad and Tobago.
“The bulk of young males are making us very proud. Let us never forget that,” Gonsalves told the event.
“But the media now, as soon as there is one murder, it is front page, and they talk about it. But the thousand of young people who do well, they don’t get that kind of coverage,” the Vincentian leader asserted.
“If you get the coverage, you get it on page forty, continued on page forty-eight,” he declared to laughter from the audience.
Gonsalves also called out opposition politicians or would-be politicians, including some journalists who want to be politicians but are not brave enough to enter the political arena.
He told the event at which Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Keith Rowley and Saint Lucia’s Philip J. Pierre were present that the opposition figures ‘spit to the wind’.
“They begin to talk all kinds of general things and ‘Is Rowley fault. Is Philip fault. Is Ralph fault’ and all that sort of thing. And ‘Give us a chance and we will do better.’ They have no plan – nothing at all. You know that and I know that and the public knows that,” Gonsalves stated.
“We have to call out that kind of foolishness when we hear it because we need to have a mature conversation, which is what this is about,” he told the regional crime symposium.
