Now that the British government has imposed sanctions on Jamaican nationals in the form of harsher immigration restrictions, more cries of outrage are to be expected. Some of us will cry victimization, hurl epithets at the Brits, and tell them to take the plank out of their own eye before they attempt to remove the mote from ours. Others, like Opposition Spokesman on Foreign Affairs Anthony Hylton, will continue to affirm that it is only a minority that is giving us a bad name, and that the majority of Jamaicans are peaceful and law-abiding. We persist in pretending, as usual, that our reputation for crime and overwhelming corruption is hidden from world view, and castigate those we believe to be exposing our dirty undergarments. We still believe that if we focus on the positives, the negatives will take care of themselves, and that all it takes is to screen foreign journalists and limit their access to those areas and citizens who live in abject poverty and squalor. Welcome to North Korea.

Pity that it may have to take foreigners to embarrass us into demanding good governance from shameless, uncaring and incompetent leaders.

On the other hand, Jamaicans ‘mostly’ have themselves to blame. If I am correct, the island has the highest murder rate in the Caribbean. It even has a higher murder rate than the whole of the UK. Jamaica is only a small country with less than a 3 million population. Yet it has a higher murder rate than a country of nearly 60 million.

In London, Jamaicans (including the majority who are not involved with any crime) have a reputation of being extremely quick to anger and hot tempered. Or just straight mad. Jamaicans argue that it’s just a stereotype. But the stereotype is real and it comes from real people’s daily experiences.

I agree with Oliver Hunter that any attempts to silence or ‘balance’ the reporting will lead Jamaica in the wrong direction.

As a Jamaican, I would love to see more positive aspects of Jamaica ’sold’ to the world. However, the world is not ’stupid’. Jamaicans also live outside of Jamaica and create reputations regardless of TV reporting.

The truth is that the ‘negative’ stories sell. A reporter will have no credibility if he went to a ‘peaceful’ country with a murder rate of one per year and tried to ‘invent’ the country as violent and a ‘blood zone’.

Negative reporters will target Jamaica because it has exactly what they are looking for.

If there are negatives in the country and they are highlighted, the focus should be on the genesis of the negatives not on the persons who point them out.

Of course if untrue statements were made the option of libel can be pursued in a court. If however the goal is to achieve what is the status quo in Iran, then the suggestions mentioned are excellent.