It is very tempting to write and report a news story that no other media house has. Especially, when you are a small media house struggling to make a living from advertising on a small island in the Caribbean.

The more hits you get on your website, the more chance you have of attracting that often elusive dollar.

However, you are not going to attract that dollar if you don’t report the facts that can be verified and not the marl road gossip that has no foundation whatsoever and can ruin someone’s life.

I have been in the media business now for twenty-six years and I wish I had started forty years earlier! I love it.

From my time at CITN/Cayman27/ TV to iNews Cayman, one thing I learnt. You MUST report facts. Gossip is not facts, no matter how salacious and titivating it is.

Over the years I have watched with dismay the reporting with the words, “our sources”, “some say”, “it has been said”, “it may happen”, etc. in the stories from even media houses that for years took pride in reporting the facts.

The late Desmond Seales and I got into loggerheads when he offered me a job, before he found out I was one of the bidders for a television/cable license, and wanted me to “lie” and write imaginary headlines because my name was good because of the person I had married. Joan WATLER. “Just her name will get what you say some credence. I told him if it is not true, for how long? “Long enough”, he said, “to make some money”.

When he found out, after I turned him down flat, that I was one of his media rivals, he cursed me out publicly in a restaurant.

However, Desmond was talented, and he knew that big, juicy, headlines meant readership but he was careful what he wrote that it had some substance, even if the source was dubious.

Now, even that has gone out of the window.

Today, we received a Press Release from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) responding to a story published by one of our small media houses. The media house made allegations alleging impropriety on the part of the ODPP and in particular a Senior Crown Counsel.

You can read the PR on our website at: http://www.ieyenews.com/wordpress/cayman-odpp-responds-to-cayman-marl-road-article/

The same web site also got into problems last year over another story against a former MLA and had to make an apology.otherwise they would have been involved in litigation.

The reason I am writing this Editorial is in the hope they go back to reporting facts and not marl road gossip. It also reflects negatively on all of us in the media business here who only place in print or online what is factual. That is the large majority of us.