THERE are two sides to every story, and so it is when it comes to the disturbing trend of vloggers and social media personalities visiting this country to showcase gangsterism.
For this year alone, this newspaper counts at least three prominent YouTubers visiting Trinidad and Tobago not necessarily to highlight our food, culture or landscape - as many have over decades - but, rather, to produce, for the benefit of their web audience, exposés on crime.
Such videos are accruing view counts suggesting millions have watched or played them. This is embarrassing, especially for a country with hopes of expanding its tourism sector.
From its inception, there has always been an unsavoury side to the internet.
Additionally, the 'trouble in paradise' trope, in which the shady underbellies of seemingly idyllic lands are brought to light, has long been a feature of mass communications culture: from travelogues in the days when such things were written, to documentaries produced by serious entities.
Vice News, an international media outlet, featured this country in 2014 in a production entitled Corruption, Cocaine and Murder in Trinidad.
Even further back was Caribbean Cops, an eight-part documentary created for British broadcaster Virgin 1 in 2008, which was designed to capture the drama of law enforcement at a series of tourist destinations, including TT.
But there is something particularly brazen and prurient about the current trend because it coincides with a moment of spiralling criminality and continued helplessness against the abuses of social media.
Still, some might argue there are benefits to these kinds of videos. We might discover fresh insights. The police might get information. The fact that vloggers are foreign might facilitate candid disclosures.
Yet, their outsider status is precisely why these exercises are potentially counterproductive. These visitors seek out risk, defying not only common sense but, also, the formal travel advisories issued by their own authorities. Should something go wrong, the fallout will be international.
Given that these productions are made, literally, for the cameras, their usefulness is also questionable. Testimonies about turning to crime because of a lack of jobs or poverty, as has featured in some videos, supply us with little that is revelatory.
There is obviously value in seeing a country in full, warts and all. And we must be wary of shooting the messenger. But it is worth questioning whether vlogs do harm by legitimising and glorifying gang culture.
Meanwhile, as Attorney General Reginald Armour, SC, asked last year, who holds bloggers to account?
There is some regulation, such as provided by defamation laws, but the reach of local authorities in relation to things like getting foreign people to co-operate with investigations is an open question.
There is a thin line between providing an outlet for expression and exploitation. Promoting those avowedly responsible for bloodshed to get more clicks seems more like one rather than the other.
The po
