Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

The name Akash Sama­roo has be­come syn­ony­mous with CNC3. How­ev­er, 13 years ago, his ca­reer could have tak­en a very dif­fer­ent path.

“TTT, which was CN­MG at the time, called me for an in­ter­view be­cause they need­ed a TV re­porter. I did the in­ter­view, and I got the job. The day I signed the con­tract, Samp­son Nan­ton called and asked if I’d like to work at CNC3. I im­me­di­ate­ly said yes, but then I told him I’d just signed with CN­MG, so I didn’t know what to do. He told me to take a day to think about it. And as fate would have it, right as I got off the phone with him, CN­MG called and said there was an er­ror in my con­tract and I need­ed to re-sign. I said, I’m so sor­ry, but I had to pick CNC3. And that’s how it hap­pened… it was meant to hap­pen,” Sama­roo shared.

Find­ing his call­ing

Sama­roo be­lieves it was an act of God that every­thing fell in­to place, al­low­ing him to be a jour­nal­ist at the TV sta­tion he al­ways ad­mired. But iron­i­cal­ly, Sama­roo re­called that be­ing a re­porter was not al­ways his dream.

“I nev­er grew up think­ing I want­ed to be a jour­nal­ist. I thought about be­ing a doc­tor, pi­lot, Pow­er Ranger even, but I nev­er thought about jour­nal­ism. But I al­ways did have a pas­sion for cre­at­ing. I had a pas­sion for help­ing peo­ple. I re­al­ly be­lieved in jus­tice for peo­ple, so­cial jus­tice,” he said.

Fif­teen years ago, the for­mer Hillview Col­lege stu­dent was look­ing through the news­pa­pers when he came across a va­can­cy ad­ver­tise­ment for a ra­dio news re­porter. It was not a ca­reer he had ex­pect­ed to pur­sue, but cov­er­ing the news for ra­dio taught him many of the fun­da­men­tals he still re­lies on to­day, and, more im­por­tant­ly, it helped him dis­cov­er his call­ing.

“I re­mem­ber one day when some­one called from one of those rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, and they had no wa­ter for about two or three months. I called WASA’s head of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tion, be­cause at that time I couldn’t call min­is­ters yet. The next day the per­son called back, and they said, thank you so much, we got wa­ter. And I re­mem­ber think­ing, okay, I could do this and help peo­ple in a tan­gi­ble way. And that is what re­al­ly got me hooked on jour­nal­ism,” he said.

Learn­ing on the job

While his work eth­ic and com­mit­ment to peo­ple-cen­tred sto­ry­telling re­mained con­stant, Sama­roo said the tran­si­tion from ra­dio to tele­vi­sion was not al­ways smooth.

He learned through videos and ex­pe­ri­ence in the field, but he shared that much of his growth came from mak­ing mis­takes, learn­ing from them and im­prov­ing along the way.

“The first time I went live on na­tion­al TV, I made a gram­mat­i­cal er­ror with­in the first 10 sec­onds, and I re­mem­ber just start­ing to feel warm and sweat­ing a lot, but I got through it. I saw a com­ment on Face­book af­ter­wards where some­body said, ‘Hmm, new pre­sen­ter and green verbs one time. And I was like, all right, ok, step up, lock in, take your time, don’t ever let this hap­pen again, and it hasn’t re­al­ly since then,” he re­called.

The com­ments and feed­back, he said, are sim­ply part of the ter­ri­to­ry, even when they come from peo­ple in po­si­tions of au­thor­i­ty.

“Peo­ple may not be aware of this, be­cause we don’t al­ways show some of the dis­re­spect we get out on the field from cer­tain politi­cians. But that’s all part of it. You’ll see us the next day and with the same ques­tion. And al­though some­times we may tend to fo­cus on the neg­a­tives and the crit­i­cism, there isn’t a day I go out­side that peo­ple don’t stop to let me know that they ap­pre­ci­ate the work we do,” he said.

From re­porter to po­lit­i­cal ed­i­tor

In his last 13 years at CNC3, Sama­roo has gone from a young re­porter learn­ing the ropes to the sta­tion’s Lead Ed­i­tor of Pol­i­tics. Al­though this new role, which he took on in Sep­tem­ber 2025, means less time in the field, he said his man­date has not changed.

“I do miss go­ing out­side some­times to meet peo­ple and do the sto­ries I used to do, which in­volved stand­ing up in a big pot­hole, or go­ing in­to this big drain or flood wa­ter. But now I have a dif­fer­ent way to tell those sto­ries be­cause us­ing that knowl­edge on the field, I am now em­pow­ered with those hard ques­tions to go to the de­ci­sion-mak­ers and the pol­i­cy set­ters. So maybe I’m not stand­ing in the pot­hole again, but I’m go­ing to the per­son who’s re­spon­si­ble for fix­ing that hole, and I’m ask­ing what’s go­ing on and why wasn’t this fixed? It’s a dif­fer­ent way to do the peo­ple’s work,” he not­ed.

A fu­ture at CNC3

It is work he be­lieves may not have been as im­pact­ful with­out the back­ing of CNC3.

“CNC3 has al­ways stood by me in these last 13 years, nev­er leav­ing me out to dry. What kept me here is the prin­ci­ple of the place and the peo­ple here. One of our man­dates is to im­prove the qual­i­ty of life for peo­ple, and CNC3 un­der­stands that. As long as we keep un­der­stand­ing that, there’ll be a fu­ture for CNC3 in an in­dus­try that is con­tract­ing, sad­ly. But I be­lieve we’ll be around for a very long time, God will­ing, for­ev­er, be­cause we un­der­stand that we have to be where you are,” he said.

Fif­teen years af­ter an­swer­ing a news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment al­most by chance, Sama­roo has found him­self ex­act­ly where he be­lieves he was meant to be. The ti­tle may have changed, and the ques­tions may now be asked from a dif­fer­ent side of the news­room, but the pur­pose that brought him in­to jour­nal­ism re­mains un­changed: to help peo­ple.