Rose Usher
Trevor Macdonald's The Secret Caribbean

I would like to voice my complaint about Trevor Macdonald's Caribbean series. The contrast between what was depicted in the episode between the other island and Jamaica was highly biased. The summary at the beginning of the episode associated Jamaica only with violence and gun crime. Whereas words such as: beautiful, sandy, haven and an escape are associated with the other islands. From watching the episode you would be under the illusion that there isn’t anything else in Jamaica apart from gun crime, violence and over priced coffee. And that no country in the world apart from Jamaica has gun crime or violence. When visiting the other islands he focuses on the present however whilst in Jamaica he talks about the past focusing on murders that happened years ago like the shooting of a little baby. The episode was edited in a way to make it seem that children are only killed in Jamaica which is completely false as children are murdered everywhere including England. The series is meant to display the beauty of the Caribbean island and show possible tourist attractions in Jamaica, however he chose to film in the poorer parts of the island such as downtown Kingston instead of going to the tourist locations (such as Negril) as he did when he visited the other islands. He visited the prisons in Jamaica interviewing convicted drug criminals from England, personally I couldn’t see the relevance nor why he needed to focus on the prisons when the island is such a beautiful place and has many wonderful places to visit and see. Sir Trevor Macdonald should have used his filming time to depict some of the beauty of the island instead of criticising it. I view this as an assassination of his Jamaica’s character and I am highly disappointed with ITV for allowing a programme to be aired which featured such a high level of bias in the contrast of the way the three different islands were presented.

Company: Rose Usher
Country: United Kingdom
Region: United Kingdom

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