Dear editor
Many years ago when Barack Obama was running for president of the United States of America, he was accused by many Republicans that he was not born in the USA and was not a citizen by birth so could not run for office.
They called him all manner of names and some news agencies had a field day with it, but what did Mr Obama do? Did he sue the news agencies and the many mouthpieces of the Republican Party for slandering his name? No.
Did he have any judge order any form of injunction on any of the news media or journalists who were running with this rubbish? No.
What he did was to provide a copy of his birth certificate. Why? Because, he had nothing to hide.
But here we have the Jamaican prime minister running around like a fowl with his head cut off and apparently hiding behind lawyers.
I commend TVJ for not offering him an apology. There are four defined rules of journalism and they are as follows:
1. Seek truth and report it: Ethical journalism should be accurate and fair. Journalists should be honest and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.
2. Minimise harm: Ethical journalism treats sources, subjects, colleagues, and members of the public as human beings deserving of respect.
3. Act independently: The highest and primary obligation of ethical journalism is to serve the public.
4. Be accountable and transparent: Ethical journalism means taking responsibility for one’s work and explaining one’s decisions to the public.
Neither Zahra Burton nor TVJ has broken any of that code of ethics where journalism is concerned, and as such the prime minister is not deserving of any apology.
Michelle Bradshaw
Dear Mr Holness, one day soon I will have a house similar to yours.
One day soon I will build/make a house like that. When I do I will show u how to achieve it.
i wonder how many people took notice that when he first made the so-called disclosure couple of months ago before he got elected prime minister he only disclose the cost of the land and the materials(including suppliers credit) to build and make NO MENTION OF THE LABOUR COST on the disclosure paper, as if he used robots or king solomon’s demons,,,,, or maybe some of his mentor eddie’s demons lol, I wonder how many people from down a garrison(s) get bad up to go up the hill to go do some SLAVE LABOUR work?,,,,,,, something the integrity commission needs to take a good look at, wonder if him gonna get a court injunction on that or draw for him lawyer on that one?
Relative to journalistic integrity, I agree with this article. However, I contend that Andrew Holiness is doing the right thing by letting his lawyer function as a buffer. Unfortunately for Andrew, that lawyer is not so solid; he is already coming across as being shaky. If Andrew does not handle this well, this will be his last term as Prime Minister and the last in the generation for the JLP.