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Fiji Times Online - Monday, July 02, 2007

Interim Finance Minister Mahendra Chaudhry is back to his favourite pastime of blaming the media when things go wrong.

He shoots the messenger when he is criticised in public or when his plans start to fall apart.

He dislikes admitting any weaknesses and failures, and points fingers at everyone else in particular the media but never himself for any shortcomings.

But now Mr Chaudhry accuses this newspaper and another media organisation of biased and negative reporting, and says we are unhelpful to the economy and discouraging investment.

He alludes to the idea that the media somehow is contributing to the poor state of the economy and making it difficult efforts to turn it around.

Its a novel idea, but frankly ridiculous.

The media did not remove the previous Government, the media are not keeping tourists away, the media are not putting various streams of aid funding at risk. Reporting on the state of the economy is reporting on an aspect of Fiji today that touches us all. By not reporting experts who tell us the economy is in trouble, we would not be telling the truth.

If Mr Chaudhry every now and then puts his ear to the ground, he will discover the reality of the situation faced by ordinary citizens, whose plight he frequently advocates he upholds.

It is not in the best interests of the people to try to tell us things are rosy and forward looking when they are not. Any responsible media will not want to mislead or deliberately lie to the people. We at all times try to present the truth. In the course of our duty to discover and disclose frequently, we know it will bring us into conflict with government at all levels because we know political interests are often served by secrecy or at least selective disclosures.

But it does not mean that we are to be blamed whenever things go wrong for the government.

Our job is to highlight the shortcomings and failures, as well as the successes, if any.

The governments job is to fix those problems.

So Mr Chaudhry should stop wasting his energy in shooting the messenger and try to convince his colleagues in the interim Cabinet to wake up and turn the economy around.

Start with tourism for example.

It is perhaps also time Mr Chaudhry abandons the thinking that he is always right and everyone else, including this newspaper, is wrong.

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