When Journalism abandons its purpose and manufactures Discontent, who will bell the cat?

When Journalism abandons its purpose and manufactures Discontent, who will bell the cat?

OPINION BY  : Hem Kumar November 2026

A nation does not become truly independent merely by raising its own flag. Independence must also live in the minds of its people—in their capacity to question, to judge, to distinguish evidence from insinuation, and to refuse manipulation, regardless of its political source.

That is the standard by which Guyana must judge not only its government and opposition, but also its media.

The press cannot demand accountability from everyone else while treating its own conduct as beyond examination. Neither can it invoke the dignity of journalism while abandoning the discipline that gives journalism its authority. A media house is not entitled to public trust simply because it opposes the government. Opposition is a political position. Journalism is a public responsibility. The two are not interchangeable.

Where reporting gives way to partisan mobilization, where suspicion is presented as proof and innuendo substitutes for investigation, the public is not being enlightened. It is being enlisted.

And a nation of citizens must never be reduced to an army of recruits.

Opposition is not an exemption from ethics

The government must be scrutinized. The PPP must face searching questions about its decisions, its stewardship and its exercise of power. No administration deserves immunity from investigation, and no journalist should need political permission to pursue an uncomfortable truth.

But none of that gives the government’s critics a license to mislead.

The obligation to be accurate does not disappear because the target is powerful. Fairness does not become optional because a headline serves an opposition narrative. An allegation does not become a fact because it has been repeated often enough, loudly enough, or by enough people with the same political interest.

If deception is wrong when practiced by the government, it is equally wrong when practiced against it. Anything less is not a defense of democracy. It is a demand that dishonesty be judged according to whom it benefits.

The charge against partisan journalism is therefore not that it criticizes the PPP. Criticism is indispensable. The charge arises when a predetermined verdict dictates the reporting—when facts are selected for their usefulness to a political argument rather than weighed for what they establish.

That is the difference between investigating power and campaigning for its replacement.

Citizens are not political property

The deepest injury inflicted by manipulative reporting is not merely that people may believe a falsehood. It is that they are encouraged to surrender the habit of independent judgment.

Every controversy becomes a partisan test. Every disagreement becomes evidence of betrayal. Every development must fit a script in which one camp is incapable of wrongdoing and the other incapable of good faith.

In that environment, citizens are asked not to think, but to identify their side and repeat its conclusions. This is intellectual dependency, not political empowerment.

There is also a contradiction in condemning political leaders for insulting the intelligence of citizens while producing commentary that appears to expect unquestioning acceptance from those same citizens. The answer to contempt is not to reproduce it through a different medium.

The Guyanese people deserve neither to be called stupid nor to be treated as though they are. They deserve reporting that equips them to disagree intelligently—even with the journalist presenting it.

The watchdog must accept scrutiny

The press must not become what it condemns.

A newsroom cannot credibly denounce propaganda while excusing distortion in its own pages. A broadcaster cannot demand transparency while concealing uncertainty beneath theatrical confidence. A commentator cannot claim to defend democratic debate while treating every challenge as proof of political allegiance.

The test is straightforward:

• What is the evidence?
• What does that evidence actually establish?
• Has the person accused been given a meaningful opportunity to respond?
• Is the audience being shown the distinction between verified fact, allegation and opinion?
• When the reporting is wrong, is the correction as visible as the original accusation?

These are not obstacles to forceful journalism. They are what make forceful journalism defensible.

Public-interest reporting can be uncompromising without being reckless. It can expose injustice without manufacturing certainty. It can challenge authority without becoming an instrument of another authority waiting for its turn.

Independence must mean more than a flag

The question confronting Guyana is larger than whether its media favor the government or the opposition. It is whether those who claim to inform the nation respect the public’s right to arrive at conclusions of its own.

Socioeconomic justice cannot be advanced by making truth negotiable. Equity cannot be secured by manipulating the very people in whose name it is demanded. Democracy cannot flourish where every institution claims to speak for the public while seeking to control what the public thinks.

The ethical appeal of journalism—its ethos—must be earned through integrity. Its logos must rest on evidence and coherent reasoning. Its pathos must awaken concern without exploiting fear, resentment or prejudice.

It is time to bell the cat.

That does not mean silencing the press, shielding the PPP, or granting any politician relief from scrutiny. It means insisting that those who exercise the power to shape public understanding accept responsibility for how they use it.

Let the government answer for its conduct. Let the opposition answer for its alternatives. And let the media answer for the accuracy, fairness and integrity of their work.

The flag declares our sovereignty. Our willingness to think freely—and to defend one another’s freedom to do so—must give that declaration substance.