BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, A junior government minister is pointing an accusing finger at the media in Barbados, noting that its coverage of the crime situation in the country is giving a false impression of the current situation.
“We have a relatively safe place, but the problem is this, there is a massive disconnect between crime in Barbados and the perception of crime in Barbados. And you know what dictates our perception? What pushes us to perceive that crime in Barbados is a lot? The media” said the Minister of State in the Office of the Attorney General with responsibility for Crime Prevention, Corey Lane.
Lane said that “crime has been relatively stable over the years” and that the perception that crime is high is mainly due to media reports, even as he acknowledged that he was not asking the media to “hide anything.”
“Crime against tourists down 142 percent,” he said, telling the audience at a joint meeting of the St James branches of the ruling Barbados Labour Party (BLP) that at least one radio station will “come and tell you two tourists get to shoot today, tomorrow and the next day and you would swear that crime is the biggest thing against tourists.”
Lane, who compared the island‘s crime statistics to those in neighboring islands, said that Barbados was among the safest but suggested that media reports had inflated the issue, citing reports of violent incidents involving students.
“Things do happen in schools all the time. If you report incidents back-to-back, your perception is that the schools are in chaos, but things happen at schools all the time. It’s just how and when and how regularly they report it.”
Last Friday, two 15-year-old secondary school students were involved in an altercation, resulting in one nursing multiple stab wounds.
Lane, also the National Crime Prevention plan chairman, maintained that he was not prompting journalists to “hide anything” on behalf of his party or the country but urged them to be responsible in their reporting.
He pointed to another island with a lower population that recorded a higher murder rate than Barbados in 2022 and suggested that the media there was more responsible in its reporting.
“Their media down there tend to understand tourism is important, so they got lead stories like ‘Big regatta next week’ in the front of the thing [news]. In Barbados, when they reported ‘Two dead last night.’”
Lane voiced concern about the potential implication that publishing such news stories can have on tourists looking for respite from the cold.
“They take up two newspapers or go online. Where do you think they are going? They don’t understand their responsibility in reporting. It is not that you are hiding. It is that it doesn’t have to be in every lead story because it isn’t new,” Lane said, also speaking about the government’s plans to address the root cause of the crime situation.
Last year, Barbados recorded more than 40 murders surpassing the 32 recorded the previous year.
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