The media has come for quite a bashing here over the past few days. The Uk’s Daily Mail followed by the Sunday Mirror recently did features purporting to expose the visit of Merseyside Chief Constable Jon Murphy and two colleagues on an expenses-paid seaside holiday. RCIPS Commissioner David Baines told iNews that the reporting was “erroneous and misleading” and “totally unjustified.”

I can agree with his use of the word ‘misleading’ as the focus of the report was on their time on our beach, on the Commissioner’s boat, snorkelling and playful antics in our waters. However, the definition of erroneous means ‘based on or containing error; mistaken; incorrect.’ In other words ‘deviating from what is correct.’ A picture paints a thousand words and they prove there was nothing ‘erroneous’ in the story. However, this is UK journalism and one of my reporter’s commented, it was the ‘ugly’ side of it. As I said on Tuesday, Mr. Baines was ‘naïve’ not to have been aware how taking UK police officers out on a pleasure trip could be perceived in view of the current climate both here and in the UK.

Now we have our Premier, Hon. McKeeva Bush taking action against Hurley’s Entertainment, Daphne Orrett, Randy Merren, together with Wendy Ledger and Nicky Watson of Cayman News Service. The charges are defamation to the first three and for publishing an article that was “falsely and maliciously published.”

I can only comment on my dealings with the UK publications. Very few suits ever get to the courts, if they do few win, and even the winners wish they hadn’t. What comes out in Court is an open can of worms. What a witness says gets reported verbatim.

Even HM Queen Elizabeth stopped a court action about to proceed against the late Princess Diana’s butler.

When the head of a small country in the Caribbean takes proceedings against the media it sends ripples of ‘press muzzling’ and interference. It makes outside investors become suspicious. It smacks of ‘dictatorship’.

I hope commonsense and wise heads prevail. The press is the voice of the people. The ‘common’ people have fought battles for less.