Running with the rumourshttp://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_news?id=161458618Darryl Heeralal Investigative Desk dheeralal@trinidadexpress.com
Sunday, March 29th 2009
PEOPLE are panicked, the country is on edge and any crime story, no matter how fantastic-sounding, is believable.
There are still those who hold as true rumours of children found in a container; that a child was abducted at Trincity Mall and her head shaved by her kidnappers before police found her; and the latest rumour that missing schoolgirls are being prostituted out to expatriates at the Gulf City Shopping Complex.
"There are so many things happening in terms of crime, almost anything can become believable," Dr Christiana Abraham, lecturer in communication studies at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine campus, reasons.
Abraham was asked about her views on what could have prompted the near-hysteria over rumours, fuelled by news reports, that 75 children, whose heads were shaved, were found in a container bound for Cuba at Shed 4 at the Port of Port of Spain on March 3.
"It reflects the state of Trinidad and Tobago. People are panicked, we are on edge. In the context of a crime-ridden society, people have become absorbed with these kind of stories and then it takes on a life of its own."
Abraham believes that had it been in another Caribbean island not faced with similar problems, such a rumour would not have "picked up in that way".
Rumours of the children in the container first hit the airwaves around 10.45 a.m. on March 3, when a man called in to Isha Wells's The Breakfast Show on Soca 91.9FM.
The programme was, at the time, dealing with the disappearance of Leah Lammy, the primary school girl who was reportedly kidnapped soon after leaving school to get a taxi to go home.
The caller asked Wells if she had heard about the children "they" had just found at the port.
Wells said she advised the man to call 555 or 800-TIPS with the information.
About 15 minutes later, a woman called and said she could confirm what the man had said, but gave a different story.
She said her cousin was a soldier and that he had opened the container and found the children, but it was not at the Port of Port of Spain but somewhere close to the army's base in Chaguaramas.
Wells said other people called with similar stories and she said she also heard it on other radio stations.
Someone who was listening to Wells's programme telephoned Marcia Henville just after 11 a.m. while she was hosting her show on Power 102FM.
The person telephoned Henville off-air.
Henville then announced on air that there were rumours of children being found in a container at the port.
Several people also called other media houses-both print and electronic-with similar stories.
However, none of the callers said they actually saw the children, but that they knew someone or had a friend who knew someone who saw the children.
Reporters also called other reporters to find out if they had heard the rumour.
By 11.15 a.m., several calls had already been made to the Commissioner of Police, James Philbert, the Assistant Commissioner of Police Crime and Operations, Raymond Craig, and the police public relations unit.
By midday, the rumour was run as a news story by several radio stations and a few television stations.
Less than an hour and a half after the first call went out to Soca 91.9FM, most of the country was aware of the rumour, with many swearing that it was true based on third- and fourth-hand information.
Other media houses ran the story later as a denial from the Police Service when Philbert sent out a release that the rumours were untrue.
The following day two daily newspapers, including the Express, ran the story on the front pages.
Around the same time that calls were made to the police and the radio stations, people called the port.
Police, Customs and Excise, firemen and port security checked and came up with nothing.
By the following day, an e-mail was circulating, purportedly from a nurse who said she had attended to the children in two different hospitals.
However, the "nurse's" story failed to check out.
The nurse said in the e-mail that she worked at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Mt Hope, during the day and at the Port of Spain General Hospital at night, which, under the present structure of the Regional Health Authorities, is not possible.Several people interviewed for this story also could not produce anyone who actually saw the children, but could only say that they heard it from someone who told them they could confirm the rumour.
Up to last week, there were callers to radio stations who still believe that children were found at the port, but when asked for evidence they could produce none.
The latest incarnation of the rumour is that the children were not local but were actually "Spanish"-looking and that all 75 are still being treated at the Port of Spain General Hospital for dehydration in a cordoned off area, which the NWRHA says is not true.
"The media has a very important social function, which, in this modern era, can become dysfunctional. The media has become one of our most important social institutions and it is on our reliance on the medium for information the media can become dysfunctional," Abraham said.
"It is in a certain kind of context the media has led the way with its robust coverage of the crime situation that can play a function in this kind of social panic."