By Lincoln Depradine

About two weeks ago, “mi pardna’’ Michael Bascombe sent me an audio copy of an interview he did with Dave – that’s Dave, as in Whycliffe Cameron – president of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB).

I immediately responded to Bas, telling him there is a part of the interview in which Cameron is talking pure, unadulterated nonsense.

I now see that at least two other regional commentators, Tony Becca and Tony Cozier, also share my views on Cameron’s chattering.

“Instead of the WICB and others trying to get independent journalists to act as their PR outfits, they should spend some of their money on establishing their own strong PR departments,’’ I told Bascombe in an e-mail.

The segment of the interview that troubled me, and also disconcerted Cozier and Becca, was Cameron’s blaming Caribbean sports writers and commentators for the ills of the game in the region; claiming that “our writers and sportscasters have only bad things to say about the board and the players’’; and his chastising of them for criticizing “rather than trying to find the good in what is going on”.

And, as his way of curing the perceived sickness of the sports writers and commentators, Cameron said he was working on this idea of organizing a cricket workshop for regional scribes and commentators.

“WICB – just like other organizations and service groups and even private sector entities (some with money to spare) – has this fanciful notion that the media is an extension of their operations,’’ I commented to Bascombe after listening to the interview. “I would like to support every Grenadian or Caribbean person or organization and big them up all the time. But they can’t expect that support simply as a matter of course, just because I’m Grenadian or Caribbean. A genuine criticism does not make you automatically unpatriotic or un-Caribbean.’’

Cozier, a world-respected veteran cricket writer and commentator, interpreted Cameron as saying that “he expects the media to toe his line, whatever the WICB’s several proven shortcomings’’.

Cameron, according to Cozier, “challenged the media with encouraging the dwindling fan base to return to watch and support the game’’. But, as Cozier put it, “only the WICB itself can achieve that by raising standards on the field, so blatantly low at present, and by mounting aggressive promotional campaigns for its various tournaments, now conspicuous by their total non-existence’’.

Cameron’s proposed cricket workshop was completely dissed by Becca. The WICB president, says Becca, “surely missed the boat this time around’’.

“First of all, he is not qualified to speak to journalists about how they do their job,’’ Becca writes.

“If the president wants to do that, then he must hire special people to write and commentate on cricket. He will then be able to call them together, and tell them what he wants of them to do, or not to do. They then can try to please him by trying to protect the game. They can then write and commentate about it in glowing terms, even when they are winning only one out of 45 Test matches against top teams away from home in the past 14 years.’’

In other words, Becca is echoing what I’ve said: independent journalists aren’t supposed to be WICB’s public relations officers. I submit that some may want to play that role; for those who want to, the WICB must find them and engage them.

Becca and Cozier are probably among the finest sports writers in the Caribbean. Although neither of them has said it, there also are some atrocious writers and commentators in the region.

However, Cameron appears to have bought into the common belief that a workshop for truly horrible writers and commentators will make them better at what they do. I disagree.

Many of the media people just plain lack the fundamentals of the job and no amount of crash courses will help; these will serve only as opportunities to get away from the workplace and attend another get-together of media workers.

As well, as hard as I try, I never could understand this idea of organizing a separate workshop for journalists to teach them about covering sports; another on covering climate change and the environment; and still others on tourism or water conservation or…pick the topic.

In my view, if one is a good journalist and reporter – which includes knowing how to research and fact check – one doesn’t need to attend all these many workshops. Of course, as a writer, you may not be an expert on banking or finance, for example; but, your training will tell you that you must tap into the expertise of a professional – somebody like a Richard Duncan or a Pointy Archibald – if you need clarification or explanation on an issue of finance or banking.

But, let’s get back to Cameron. As I said to Michael Bascombe, the WICB president is wasting his time with his cricket workshop plan.

Now, having heard the views of Tony Becca and Tony Cozier, I’m even more firmly convinced that Cameron is indeed engaging in time-wasting and is about to embark on an exercise of utter futility.