The Wall Street Journal and Jamaica

Ewart Walters, GUEST COLUMNIST

The Wall Street Journal's surprising intervention into the matter of Jamaica's athletic drug-testing programme is an eyebrow raiser. But history shows that this speculative story of November 13 about the bona fides of JADCO Chairman Herb Elliott - complete with a picture of the unsullied Usain Bolt - fits nicely in with the journal's track record and is part of its DNA.

It also serves to underscore The Gleaner's warning in a recent editorial about the possible geopolitical reasons for the harsh, unrelenting focus on the sustained high performance of Jamaica's athletes, if not really on JADCO's testing regime.

Known as 'the bible of US conservatism', the Wall Street Journal has consistently supported and promoted the interests of the US Right wing through the Republican Party and its very well-heeled neo-conservative fellow travellers. It has rarely diverted from being the mouthpiece for US commercial activity. Even more rarely has it been known to devote any attention to Jamaica or things Jamaican.

For instance, when in the last few years, the official murder rate in Jamaica hovered in the 1,500-per-annum range, the Wall Street Journal did not appear to take notice or call for a change of government. Flash back some 33 years when the murder figures were nearly half as much, however, and that newspaper jumped headlong into Jamaican politics and promoted a change of government.

It was the spring of 1980. The battle to oust the government of Michael Manley had reached its zenith. It had started in the 1976 election year and received support from several newspapers, particularly American ones. It subsided for a while and then made a furious return around 1979 as election year 1980 loomed, so much so that it prompted calypsonian Lord Laro to compose and sing his song, Foreign Press.

And that's when the Wall Street Journal fired its big cannon. It published an editorial on Jamaica, offering comfort to the US metals companies that were mining bauxite in Jamaica by its prophecy that their man Edward Seaga would be winning the upcoming election and that he would "remove the bauxite levy" of late 1974.

The editorial seemed to climax a spate of news stories in the Wall Street Journal that consistently 'bun bad lamp' on Jamaica and Jamaica's image. But in the midst of this campaign, a delegation from the Wall Street Journal appeared one day at the Consulate General of Jamaica on Second Avenue in Manhattan, New York, with an interesting offer. The Wall Street Journal was offering to publish a full-colour centre spread, and the objective would be to promote Jamaica in the most positive way.

The consul who received the delegation could not believe his ears. He listened, amazed, to the details of the offer, noting with care that this enticing offer came with a price. Yes! Having spent the last year or so daubing mud all over Jamaica and things Jamaican, the Wall Street Journal was now offering its services to clean up the mess it had made. But Jamaica would have to pay.

other considerations

The thing is, when it comes to Jamaica, the Wall Street Journal has never really been interested in doing a news story or a feature story simply on the basis of straight news, but more likely has been impelled by other considerations.

The American woman who had been working for certain Jamaican interests in the US, and who in 1981 got rewarded with the contract for public relations for all Jamaican agencies operating in the US, more than once boasted to the Jamaican consul in New York of her connections to Right-wing news media and, specifically, named the Wall Street Journal.

Exactly what forces are behind this year's extensive focus on Jamaican athletes is as yet unknown. Clearly, JADCO dropped the ball in its slothful response. Clearly, Prime Minister Simpson Miller picked it up and took swift corrective action.

Equally clearly, several athletes have been tested and found wanting. And while there might well be legitimate reasons in some cases, the fact remains that the bona fides of the Wall Street Journal, and not only Dr Elliott, must now also be placed under the microscope.

Ewart Walters is a journalist, author and former diplomat. His autobiography, 'To Follow Right - A Journalist's Journey', was published in 2011. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.