I’m a
media
dissident. It’s reflected in what I consider important and
newsworthy, in the events to which I am invited and those which
I’m not, and in my methods and ethical standards.
It’s not
merely that I'm small-time or publishing in a minority
language.
It’s not that I consider myself better than everyone else,
or my work above reproach or unamenable to improvement. Not by
a
long shot.
But by and
large
the rest of the Panamanian press considers their business pages
the province of the banks and Free Zone merchants and organized
agricultural, industrial, commercial and occasionally labor
interests, and though I agree that it’s important to cover
important developments in those sectors, I also devote a fair
amount of coverage to the huge, largely informal part of the
economy occupied by the micro-sector. The medicinal plant
vendor
shown above and many tens of thousands of other tiny
businesspeople like her in many ways set the economic context
to
which the larger players must adjust. And anyway, my Business
section feature on El Mercadito was a good chance to walk a few miles in
a
place where some of the guide books say I shouldn’t, pick
up a bunch of genips and compare certain claims about noni to
market realities.
You might ask
why this woman is on our front page, instead of one or more of
the Miss Universe contestants, who are in town for the pageant
that culminates on June 3. And here again, I stray from the
pack.
The beauty
contest is the subject of this issue’s Editorial, and aspects of it are in the News Briefs, the Business & Economy Briefs and the Calendar. Yes, it’s important to Panama City’s
hotels and restaurants for a few weeks. No, it’s not
worthy
of the special sections in the daily newspapers or the one-
third
of the time on the commercial TV networks’s news
broadcasts
that it’s getting. No, neither Donald Trump nor any other
gringo benefactor will be Panama’s savior. No, I
don’t
care about which of the beauty queens smoke, or which ones have
tattoos. No, I won't risk my camera or my cell phone when
Mireya’s presidential guards are arrayed around the queens
and beating up reporters and confiscating or destroying their
possessions on Mr. Trump’s behalf. No, the kind of staged
photos on which the Trump organization insists are not the
sorts
of graphics that ordinarily make it into The Panama News.
Enjoy the
party,
if that’s your cup of tea. By all means. But don’t
delude yourself into thinking that this is important news.
In the long
run,
the most important news story in Panama is the nation’s
economic development. Yes, culture and lifestyles and sports
and
dining and entertainment are also newsworthy in their places
and
even have their economic, social and political importance, but
if I had the resources to do a proper job of reporting about
the
love lives of celebrities, I’d spend them on something
else. So if you just can’t live uninformed about the
trivia
of Ricky Martin’s or Shakira’s or Madonna’s or
Justine Pasek's existence, you need to read other publications
in addition to The Panama News.
As it happens,
the lead News story in this edition is former President Guillermo Endara’s talk at Excedra Books. It was
announced as a discourse on culture, but could only live up to
that billing by way of a broad interpretation of the word
“culture,” one that goes well beyond the arts and
letters. I was the only journalist there, and that also says
something about my news judgment as compared to the
mainstream’s.
Where else have
I been these past couple of weeks? I made it to Colon’s
Panama Al Brown Arena for a night of boxing. (Also from Colon, Roxanna Cain contributes to The Panama News for the
first
time in awhile, with a Travel section feature.) As mentioned
above, I was in El Mercadito, and also made it to Plaza Francia to illustrate stories on the Community and Travel pages, went to the Smithsonian
twice for three stories that appear in the Business, Science and Dining sections respectively, paid a visit to artist Janet Levi, went to a high school play and kept my camera handy to take
pictures of things I encountered while hoofing around the
capital, three of which ended up in the News, Business and Outdoors sections respectively. Plus, of course, I
spent many hours hunched in front of computers at the office
and
elsewhere.
And where else?
Getting
interrogated twice by prosecutors, who are talking about
charging me with a crime about The Panama News’s debt to
Seguro Social. Money needs to be raised to pay off this nearly
$7,000 bill or else the government will shut us down and give
me
an opportunity to do some jailhouse reporting for some other
medium.
Mopping up from
floods and sweeping up from repairs at the office. The
Muchachas
Guias (Girl Scouts), our landladies, need to do some
fundraising
of their own for a new roof.
Meeting with
lawyers for jerks, and reading threatening or insulting emails
from their accomplices, such as the spam distributed through
Mercadeo Electronico that accuses me of complicity in an
extortion plot against Tom McMurrain and his poor oppressed
noni
hustlers. It seems that there WERE hidden cameras in place for
at least one of the several meetings between freelance
contributor Okke Ornstein or me and the San Cristobal Land
Development lawyers. I turned down the proffered money, which
was tendered for an innocent purpose but could have been
spliced
into “proof” of bribery or extortion. I told them if
they wanted to reply to the stories we ran in volume 9, issues
8 and 9 I’d publish what they have to say, but so far
they haven’t taken me up on that one. My problems with the
Seguro debt are a thousand times more serious than this affair,
but the guys who promise to make you rich off of Bocas noni and
teak have managed to waste my time.
And I do find
it
slightly frustrating that I haven’t been able to spend
more
time helping myself and the paper.
I thank those
of
you who have come forward with assistance at this difficult
time. I encourage those who have asked about buying ads to do
so. An auction of a complete set of the several years or print
editions of The Panama News and maybe some other items is in
the
works. I don’t get to cook for other people as much as I
have in the past, and am mulling the possibility of firing up
the woks for a fundraising dinner. And then you can send your
checks to the mailing address listed in the red box at the
bottom this page.
I won’t
get
out of this jam without some help from the readers, but there
are thousands of you out there and I’m confident that we
can survive this crisis and be around for better times.
