The media and public are invited to a lecture on the late journalist Patrick Chookolingo, on Wednesday at 5.30 pm, in the AV Room at the National Library, Abercromby Street, Port-of-Spain.
Hosted by Friends of Mr Biswas, the speaker is former editor-in-chief of the T&T Guardian, veteran journalist Lennox Grant, who worked with Choko and has done research on his work and life.
Friends of Mr Biswas said in a press release: “Although he has been officially recognised as a national icon, and although this controversial newspaperman was a legend in the 1970s and early 1980s, the present generation hardly know his name. Those who worked with him remember his energy and his ebullience, but there has not been much reflection on or analysis of the kind of journalism Chookolingo practised or what it might have come out of.
“Patrick Chookolingo began his journalistic career in the 1940s, the last decade of the ground-breaking Seepersad Naipaul. In many ways, not least in his unfettered imagination, his investigative bent, his intuitive grasp of what mattered in the news, and his commitment to story and personalities he was the inheritor of a kingdom created by Seepersad Naipaul.
“After early work with the Chronicle and the Gazette, Choko moved in the early 1960s to the Trinidad Daily Mirror which was owned by an Englishman. The staff also included George John, Owen Baptiste, David Renwick, Kitty Hannays, Bootkins Alkins and Ric Hernandez, and was soon to be joined by young folk like Raoul Pantin and Keith Smith.”
When the Mirror was bought in September 1966 by Lord Thomson, who already owned the Guardian, he closed down the Mirror, and this led to the establishment of the Trinidad Express. Choko became the new paper’s general manager.
“To follow Choko’s career,” says the release, “is to trace the arc of T&T journalism in the second half of the 20th century.
In 1972, he started the Bomb and the Sunday Punch, and in 1981 he launched the Mirror. He was the pioneer in Trinidad of the weekly tabloid, and many rank him high as an investigative journalist who was quite fearless and not averse to adding hot pepper and exciting spice to what he was serving up. He was respected by his peers, read by high and low, and had many run-ins with the law as he tested the boundaries of journalism drawn up by the powers that be.”
How would Choko have treated with 21st-century Trinidad? Veteran journalist and T&T Guardian sports editor Valentino Singh remembered: “Patrick Chokolingo, the best newspaperman that I have ever known and under whose tutelage I made my entry into this profession, once told me that no matter how convincing you think you are, and despite the strength of your argument, people are going to see what they want.”